EDBM – COURSE ASSIGNMENT INFORMATION AND REQUIREMENTS

Lecturer: Mohmad Zahid bin Ramli

Date of Lecture: 19 – 20 June 2010
Responsibility: Individual
Date of submission: per course outline set by FineArt Lifelong
Mode of submission: Hardcopy to Fine Art

Please take note that not all the resources to complete the assignment are from the course
notes. Be resourceful to find them from other sources.

Please answer the following questions in your own words and show the working of the
solutions, do not copy the statements from text book or Internet.

QUESTION 1

TM Taught Communication Services Inc. in Pulau Pinang is an innovative manufacturer of

cellular phone products. One of their bright, young engineers has designed a new cellular
phone that is 25 percent smaller and lighter than any competitor’s phone. The vice president
of marketing has named Mr. Regupathy, his top salesman, to manage a project to engineer
and manufacture the new product. He asks Robert to develop a schedule and budget and
present it to the executive management team the following week.

When Mr. Regupathy present his plans to the executive management team, there is
considerable discussion about whether the company should begin manufacturing the new
phone. After the meeting, the chief operations officer (COO) of the company approaches Mr.
Regupathy and asks him to move forward with the project and report directly to him. The
COO asks to personally approve each project expense. In the mean time, the COO will work
on getting the approval of the executive team.

A. Based on what you have listened and learnt during the lecture, what steps should Mr.
Regupathy take to ensure the success of the project? Consider the following in your
answer:
1) Have project management principles been followed?
2) Have roles and responsibilities been properly defined?
3) Is Mr. Regupathy qualified?
4) Has there been proper management approval?

Hint: There should be at least four paragraphs in answering the above question with each
paragraph discussing the details of each item 1 – 4. The length of the answer is between 1 –
1½ page.
[5+5+5+5 = 20 marks]
QUESTION 2

A. Use a weighted score model to choose between 5 project A, B, C, D and E for setting
up a factory. The relative weights for each criterion are shown in the following table.
A score of 1 represents least favourable up to 10 being the most favourable. Provide
the solution using a spread sheet and then preferably insert in the word file.

Project
CRITERION WEIGHT
A B C D E

Strong sponsor 2.0 9 3 6 1 3

Support business strategy 5.0 5 7 8 0 10
Urgency 4.0 2 2 2 5 10
10% sales from new products 3.0 0 0 3 10 1
Competition 1.0 2 5 6 6 8
Fill market gap 3.0 5 1 8 9 0

B. Rate the project from the highest to the lowest.

C. If the weight for “Strong sponsor” is changed from 2.0 to 5.0, will the project
selection change? What are the three highest weighted project score with this new
weight?
D. Why is it important that the weights mirror critical strategic factors.
[13+1+2+3 = 19 marks]

QUESTION 3

A. Two new software projects are proposed to a young start-up company. The Alpha project
will cost RM150,000 to develop and is expected to have annual cash flow of RM40,000.
The Beta project will cost RM200,000 to develop and is expected to have annual net cash
flow of RM50,000. The company is very concerned about their cash flow. Using the
financial criterion of project selection below, assist the company in making the right
decision to choose the best project. You can use the EXCEL spread sheet or manual
computation to calculate:
i. NPV
ii. Pay back year

Assume a 10% discount rate.

B. Discuss some of the limitations of project evaluation models: NPV, Weighted score
model and payback?

[10+10+3=23 marks]
QUESTION 4

A large eastern city is requesting federal funding for a park-and-ride project. One of the
requirements in the request application is a network plan for the design phase of the project.
Cathy Gan, the chief engineer, wants you to develop a project network plan to meet this
requirement. She has gathered the activity time estimates and their dependencies shown here.

Draw the AON network. Find the critical path, the slack times, and the expected completion
time by preparing forward pass/backward pass table.

ID Activity Predecessor Time

A Survey None 5
B Soils report A 20
C Traffic design A 30
D Lot layout A 5
E Approve design B, C, D 80
F Illumination E 15
G Drainage E 30
H Landscape E 25
I Signing E 20
J Bid proposal F, G, H, I 10

[18 marks]