Project Planning

The fifth and final piece of my 5 part blog on engineering management, this time we talk about project management which can also be described as time management.

We have two main tools at our disposal in regards to project planning:

• Gannt Chart.
• Network Diagram.

Gannt Chart:-

This chart display each action as a bar, the length of the bar is the time required to complete the specified action, however make sure actions that are dependent on other actions should not be placed on the same or a previous time frame.

Network Diagram:-

There are 2 types of network diagrams, both function basically the same but the organization is different and should be taken into account when plotting them out.

• On Node
• On Arrow

The first considers the action on the node itself while the latter presumes the action to be represented by the arrow linking the nodes.

A network diagram is used to calculate the early start early finish and the late start late finish so as to discover the critical path so as to veer away from it if possible when finally working on the project, so as not to back oneself against a wall.

This chapter was one of the simpler ones, the calculations were minimal and the presentation intuitive and easy to understand, hopefully the same can be said about this very blog. I've tried to compress most of the main topics while being enjoyable and simple to read, I feel as I've succeeded in capturing the "feel" or essence of the course.

I hoped you enjoyed reading it as I enjoyed writing it.

Production Planning

The fourth chapter talks about two things:

• Planning a manufacturing facility.
• Inventory management.

Planning a manufacturing facility

The 2 main things to consider are:

• Location.
• Facility layout.

The ideal location depends on the type of facility you are planning, whether it is a heavy manufacturing facility, light industry facility or a warehouse / retail facility.
Depending on the type, weights are changed accordingly for different factors such as land costs and proximity to customers etc etc.
Each location is given a score for each criteria that is multiplied by the weight assigned, location with the highest score is usually the best choice.

Facility layout also depends on what you are making, the diversity of your products (eg. custom made or mass production) and their size.

The type of layout required is usually as easy choice, as the ideal for most products is already known.

Facility layouts are:

• Process Layout.
• Production Layout.
• Fixed Position Layout.
• Group Technology Layout.

Inventory Management

There are a lot of choices to be made in inventory management, from the amount to buy to the length of time to store them to withholding an extra spare amount for times of sudden increases in demand.

Which is why we use 2 techniques for calculating inventory aspects: EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) and Break even Analysis, EOQ calculating the best amount to buy whereas Break even analysis is to calculate whether you are making any profit or not and how many of sadi product should be sold to at least have covered your losses.

Overall this chapter is filled with many important concepts and second in size and importance only to the second.

Decision Making

Decision Making is management, when it comes down to it, all the planning and forecasting will leave you with multiple alternatives, not all choices are easy to make and the pressure may be far too great in some cases but there is exactly when an amazing manager shines.

Following the trend set by previous chapters, decision making was broken down into multiple categories depending on the information available, they are:

1. Decision making under certainty.
   
2. Decision making under risk.
3. Decision making under uncertainty.

Each with their own methods and techniques used to help calculate the best alternative.

Decision making under certainty

This represents an instance where we are certain of what the future holds or at least assume so.

These types of problems are usually solved with linear programming, as there is no risk or chance involved, only maximizing profits or minimizing costs, as such linear programming is the ideal tool for both finding the result and displaying it in a clear and easy to understand way.

Decision making under risk

This state of nature describes having multiple outcomes in which you know the chance of each happening, usually solved by using a tree diagram and multiplying each outcome's probability with it's result and adding them for each alternative.


Decision making under uncertainty

This final state of nature is the vaguest of them all, not only is there the possibility of multiple outcomes but the chance of those outcome occurring is unknown to us as well. There are many ways to calculate these situations and which approach to take is up to you, you could go with maximax (optimist) maximin (pessimist) or minimax.

When its all said and done, these calculation are nothing but guidelines and recommendations, the final call lies with the manager himself.

Planning and Forecasting.

In my opinion, this is the most important chapter of the entire course. While it is quite simple and intuitive it covers 2 and the main responsibilities of a manager, Planning and Forecasting.

Planning:-

There are many different levels of planning, whether it is the broad scope of what it is your enterprise will achieve or the smaller details of how it'll do so. This part of chapter 2 kicks off with defining the vision and purpose behind your organization and the subtle differences between the two.

The discussion then moves on deeper into planning around different parameters such as objectives, technology and the business portfolio matrix you wish your own enterprise to follow.

Finally we branch off in a different direction: Responsibility. It shows who is responsible whether the plan succeeds or fails, whether it is to receive rewards and recognition or be held accountable for the resulting losses.

Forecasting:-

Forecasting is the act of predicting a future event based on the past information, whether it is by following a trend or noticing a relationship with another product / time / season.

Forecasting is used on many many types of information, for example using it to calculate demand on a product, greatly helps in calculating other related information such from the supplies and raw material required to the amount of manpower needed to the amount of time needed to satisfy said demand.

As you can see, forecasting is critical to sound planning, it gives a solid amount of information one can base his plans on, instead of simply going by intuition and playing hit or miss.

The lesson progresses into the 2 types of forecasting available: Quantitative and Qualitative discussing when best to use which. (Please note that even with Qualitative forecasting, Quantitative forecasting is required as a reference.)

Finishing up we delve deeper into Quantitative methods including but not limited to: Moving Average, Weighted Moving Average, Exponential Smoothing and Multiple Regression.

As you can see, this chapter is definitely one of the bigger ones and filled to the brim with content, a welcome change from the first.

Introduction to Engineering Managment

Hello, my name is Abdulrhman Jiffry and I will be writing a 5 part blog about each topic that we took in the IE 256: Engineering Management. While I'm not sure what the purpose for this blog is when the forums provide a similar activity, it isn't really my place to question the rules but simply to adhere to them for the time being.

I'll be talking about the first Chapter, aptly named "Introduction to Engineering management" in this first post, not as a second explination but simply as a summary of the ground it covered and the significance of doing so.

The start of this chapter was just a short semantics discussion on whether Engineering is an art or a profession, a discussion who's usefulness was... questionable to say the least.

The classification trend didn't end there however, it continued breaking things down under other section such as context, input, output and the relation they all share with each other so basically more boring stuff that really didn't seem practical at all.

"Whats next?" you must be wondering, probably on the edge of your seat with anticipation. Well it was even more chatter though at least with relevance to the course material now. Defining management, talking about where a manager's roles and responsibilities lie, the skills he needs to develop for those roles, the different levels of management and how the required skills change with those levels were all discussed.

Although slow to start (first half bore me into submission) I do feel that the chapter accomplished what it was intended to do: Lay down the groundwork and give a general view of Engineering Management before divulging into the specifics.