Operations and Supply Chain Management 14th Edition by Robert Jacobs,Richard Chase

Exercise 5

You work for Nokia in its global cell phone group. You have been made project manager for the design of a new cell phone. Your supervisors have already scoped the project so you have a list showing the work breakdown structure, and this includes major project activities. You must plan the project schedule and calculate project duration. Your boss wants the schedule on his desk tomorrow morning!
You have been given the information in Exhibit 4.13. It includes all the activities required in the project and the duration of each activity. Also, dependencies between the activities have been identified. Remember that the preceding activity must be fully completed before work on the following activity can be started.
Your project is divided into five major subprojects. Subproject P involves developing specifications for the new cell phone. Here decisions related to such things as battery life, size of the phone, and features need to be made. These details are based on how a customer uses the cell phone. These user specifications are redefined in terms that have meaning to the subcontractors that will actually make the new cell phone in subproject S, supplier specifications.

These involve engineering details for how the product will perform.
The individual components that make up the product are the focus of subproject D. Subproject I brings all the components together, and a working prototype is built and tested.
Finally in subproject V, suppliers are selected and contracts are negotiated.
The second change your boss would like you to consider would be to select the suppliers during subproject P and have them work directly with the dedicated teams as described in problem 4. This would involve adding an additional activity to subproject P called supplier selection and contract negotiation (P5) with a duration of 12 weeks. This new activity would be done in parallel with P1, P2, P3, and P4. Subprojects S and V would be eliminated from the project. What would be the expected impact on how long it would take to complete the project if this additional change were made?