MASTER IN BUSINESS MANANGEMENT (SECURITY AND DEFENCE)

OPERATION MANAGEMENT (DMD 4373)

ASSIGNMENT 2

Prepared By: Mej Mohd Zaki bin Jusoh (3201327)

E-mail: zakiey_9899@yahoo.com.my/3201327@alfateh.upnm.edu.my

Case study United Photonics Malaysia Sdn Bhd.

1. Who do you think should manage the Laz-skan Development Project?

The Laz-skan project under Customer Services Unit of United Photonics Malaysia (UPM), a
general instrument and gauge manufacturer for engineering industry. The project is the
development of a vision metrology device that could optically scan a product at some point in
the manufacturing project process, and check the accuracy of up to twenty individual
dimensions. The project was justified by its President as the opportunity to ensure UPM
relevance in global instrument’s industry competition. By looking to the fundamental of the
project it will cost highly in investment and the successful of the project would provide
highly opportunity to UPM in the industry. There are significantly factors to ensure the
successful of the project;

a. Clearly defined goals.

b. Top management support.
c. Competent project team members.
d. Sufficient resource allocation.
e. Adequate communication channels.
f. Control Mechanisms.
g. Feedback capabilities.
h. Responsiveness to clients.
i. Troubleshooting problems.
j. Project staff continuity.

Thus to ensure all the factors will be achieved and controlled, a project manager is
needed. The appointed laz-skan project manager should have five characteristics as an
effective project manager;

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 a. Background and experience which are consistent with the needs of the project.

b. Leadership and strategic expertise in order to maintain an understanding of the

overall project and its environment, while at the same time working on the details of the
project.

c. Technical expertise in the area of the project in order to make sound technical
decisions

d. Interpersonal competence and the people skills to take such roles as project
champion, motivator, communicator, facilitator and politician.

f. Proven managerial ability in term of a track record of getting done.

Therefore, by considering all the factors of successful project and effective Project
Manager, UPM should appointed T.S Lim to manage the Laz-skan project development as
the leader.

2. What are the major dangers and difficulties that will be faced by the development
team as they manage the project towards its completion?

Based on Investigation to identify the feasibility of the Laz-skan project development, there
are three major dangers and difficulties that will be experienced as follows;

a. Subsystems Expert Availability. The lens and the control software availability would
be the dangers and difficulties in managing the projects towards its completion. The Lens
Subsystem Expert refuse to commit to produce high tolerance lens specification due to the
trial approach involve as their manufacturing the specification needed lens. Meanwhile, the
control software were imposed out of experience for the UPM Software Development Unit
and even though UPM already hired software engineer with background experience, there are
still uncertainty prediction towards its completion of the project.

b. High Manufacturing Cost. The cost of operating Laz-skan project had been identified
would be far higher than the UPM existing products. Thus, the project development should

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consider highly cost investment and the estimation of its turnover cost if UPM still want to
proceed the projects.

c. Acceleration Cost. As the project decided its crucial dateline. Another cost will burst
which is acceleration costs that needed to make sure the identified acceleration opportunities
to meet the Laz-skan project dateline.

3. What can they do about these dangers and difficulties?

By considering the crucial date line and the other difficulties that imposed highly cost to the
project. Since the top management of UPM viewed the project would be a high priority
project due to the highly turnover values based on market prospect analysis conducted and
the willingness of top management to fund the project with additional budget as well, the
‘Crashing Networks’ might be done to the project in order to overcome these dangers and
difficulties.

Crashing networks is the process of reducing time spans on critical path activities so
that the project is completed in less time. But, the additional cost will be imposed to the
project. The Laz-skan project might considered as follows:

a. Subcontracting the high tolerance lens to the expert company.

b. Hiring additional software engineer and staff to focus for establishing the
control software to meet the date line and requirement of the Laz-skan project.

c. The reschedule of working towards the completion of the project need to be

considered overtime working hours.

d. Crashing some activities by conducting ‘Analyzing Cost-Time Trade Off’ by

determining:

(1) The project critical paths.

(2) The activities on the critical paths with lowest cost of crashing per
week.

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(3) These activities reducing process until cannot be further reduced or
another path becomes critical.

(4) The repeatability of the procedures until the direct cost of the project
larger than the savings that generated by shortening the project.