Question

1. C. Coleman distributes a variety of food products that are sold through grocery store and supermarket outlets. The company receives orders directly from the individual outlets, with a typical order requesting the delivery of several cases of anywhere from 20 to 50 different products. Under the company’s current warehouse operation, warehouse clerks dispatch order-picking personnel to fill each order and have the goods moved to the warehouse shipping area

 

Because of the high labor costs and relatively low productivity of hand order picking, management has decided to automate the warehouse operation by installing a computer-controlled order-picking system along with a conveyor system for moving goods from storage to the warehouse shipping area. R. C. Coleman’s director of material management has been named the project manager in charge of the automated warehouse system. After consulting with members of the engineering staff and warehouse management personnel, the director compiled a list of activities associated with the project. The optimistic, most probable and pessimistic times (in weeks) have also been provided for each activity.

 

Activity	Description	Immediate Predecessor
A	Determine equipment needs	-
B	Obtain vendor proposals	-
C	Select vendor	A,B
D	Order system	C
E	Design new warehouse layout	C
F	Design warehouse	E
G	Design computer interface	C
H	Interface computer	D,F,G
I	Install system	D,F
J	Train system operators	H
K	Test system	I,J

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Activity	Optimistic	Most Probable	Pessimistic
A	4	6	8
B	6	8	16
C	2	4	6
D	8	10	24
E	7	10	13
F	4	6	8
G	4	6	20
H	4	6	8
I	4	6	14
J	3	4	5
K	2	4	6

 

The company wants to know the following.

1. Draw an Activity on Node diagram (AON).
2. Determine the expected time and variance of each activity.
3. What are the critical activities, and what is the expected project completion time?
4. Determine project variance and standard deviation.
5. What due date gives the project a 95% chance of on-time completion? (Take Z=1.65)