Description

Activity: Project Planning part 2 - MS Project plans

Instructions

●        This is primarily an individual exercise but you may like to work with your group to check progress and resolve any difficulties.

●        Feedback on the discussion board for this week is a discussion of what you found easy/hard or questions about use of Microsoft Project.

●        Post your answer in the Section 3 Project Planning discussion forum for comment by your fellow students and your tutor

Tasks

Read and analyse the scenario below then:

1.    Create a Microsoft Project file (.MPP) for James Black Guitars – the Case Study that you used in Project Planning part 1 Activity to create a PBS

2.    Define project information (start date, calendar options). Save file and save after each change.

3.    Enter tasks, indent/outdent to demote/promote. Enter task durations and dependencies. Don’t forget milestones (checkpoints) and check that your plan focuses on delivering the products on your PBS.

4.    Adjust timescale view as necessary.

5.    Allocate resources and if feeling confident with MS Project, their calendars and costs.

6.    Adjust the print view, save and load your MS Project (MPP) file to the forum for discussion.

Scenario - James Black Guitars 2012

James Black started his business 3 years ago. He buys Aria guitars in large numbers from overseas and then sells them on to both dealers and the general public.

Most of these guitars are in perfect condition, but some have damage ranging from minor cosmetic scratches to more major cracks or structural defects.

The guitars are kept in a number of warehouses in locations across the south east of England, and he uses a very basic sales order processing and stock control package to account for the guitars both physically and financially.

James intends to expand by buying two more small companies that supply guitars of various other makes.

The current package is OK for one or two warehouses, but it will not cope with a multi-warehouse, multi-location set-up. To make matters worth the companies that he is buying currently use different software.

 This matter needs to be resolved, and it is imperative that he gets his operation organised and more streamlined.

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At present each warehouse has its own copy of the sales order processing and stock control package. There is no way that one warehouse can see the stock in another warehouse, which means that there is very little flexibility and sales are lost that may have been sourced from another warehouse.

He needs to do this to retain his good feedback score on his eBay shop plus he has the added challenge of having to compete with established Suppliers for his sales to shops / dealers.

Your project is to implement a new Sales Order Processing and Stock Control package to manage stock in all warehouses.