PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Management



Project Management

Section A:

Question 1

(a) The Process Types Used In Operations Within The Volume-Variety Continuum

Process types are the general ways and the approaches which are designed to carry out and manage a certain process. The process type crucially depends on the two important factors. These factors are volume and variety of a product or a service that is processed by an organization.

Organizations manage their processes on the basis of a continuum. The representation of this continuum can be done by a diagonal line of a graph which represents the natural line. However, the processes must lie close to the line of fit, which represents a balance between the processes and its volume-variety continuum (Rozman, 2010, pp. 23-30).

Manufacturing Process Types

There are five categories of the manufacturing process type

Project

Projects are linked to the process which produces the products and services of high variety and low volume. In the project, the location of the product is stationary.

Jobbing

Jobbing is same as the project, as it also produces products of high variety and low volume. However, the product moves to the location where the resources are being transformed as the equipment.

Batch

Batch produces products of medium variety and medium volume.

Mass

Mass is termed to the process of producing goods of high volume and low variety. As the production in this process is of high volume, it is cost effective to use specialized labor and equipment.

Continuous

Processes that have to work continuously to produce a very high variety of a standard product are known as continuous process.

Service Process types

There are three process types of service

Professional Service

Professional service type operates with a high variety of products with low volume. Customization is the main feature of professional service.

Service Shop

The service shop process operates with a medium variety and volune continuum. There is a certain amount of customization.

Mass Service

Mass service is the process which operates with a low variety and high volume. There is little customization and minimum contact between the customers and the service provider.

b) Characteristics of Process Type

Quality

In a low volume-high variety process continuum, the quality is concerned highly with the final appearance and the outcome of the process of its detailed design (Rozman, 2010, pp. 23-30). However, with the high volume-low variety process continuum, quality is referred to something which is the most important and essential part of the process and it exclusively refer to the error-free service.

The meaning of quality under the two continuums shifts significantly from being concerned with the specifications and the delivery of a product or service, to the achievement of the optimum quality in the final result (Olsson, 2006, Pp.66-74).

Speed

Speed in the low volume-high variety has to be negotiated with each of the process participant, based on the specification of the client (Larson, 2003, pp. 252-564). However, the project manager has to estimate the time and the work which has to be done in the defined time at each stage.

Simultaneously, in the high volume-low variety context, speed ...