Project Management

Distribution centre implementation for a national grocery retailer:

You have been appointed as a project manager to manage the implementation of a new distribution centre for ABC Ltd, a national grocery retailer. The new distribution centre will replace 5 existing regional centres. It will have 500 staff in total. While most of the staff will be relocated from existing centres, new staff will be employed to fill the remaining vacancies.

There will be a newly constructed 100,000 sqm complex with 25 loading bays. The new distribution centre will include packing, wrapping and dispatch to a large network of grocery outlets on a timely basis. It will require a new fleet of vehicles, which are currently outsourced to a third party transport operator.

You have been appointed directly by the Chief Supply Chain Manager, and she is counting on you to complete this project successfully. The project is seen as critical since efficient supply chain operations affect all the major areas of the business, and therefore affect the overall profit of the business. The new distribution centre will streamline the whole supply chain for ABC and is expected to improve overall profits by $2 million per year.

This is considered a greenfield project since there are no systems, processes, infrastructure or even any staff as yet. You have much flexibility in designing this project. Some of the key tasks are:

· The project has been approved in principal only, so realistic time lines and expense budgets are required by management as an early project milestone.

· The project team has not been formed yet, so it must be designed and resourced.

· The location of the new distribution centre has not been decided yet, so a selection process is needed.

· The new distribution centre has not been designed and constructed yet.

· None of the systems have been selected yet, so a process must be put into place to achieve this.

Note that the above task list is incomplete. Based on the case and your assumptions, you need to include additional relevant tasks to complete this assignment. You need to research typical components for this project so as to better define milestones, tasks, outcomes, costs and resources. Project managers always have to gain some knowledge of components of their projects.

Your project should have at least 80 tasks, perhaps many more. You will use MS Project as the basic tool to manage this.

Here are the estimated costs for the main components of the project:

Item Estimated cost

Construction of the building $3,000,000

Fit-out of the building $700,000

Warehouse management system $500,000

Inventory management system $300,000

RFID technology $200,000

Security system $100,000

Consultancy costs (average) $500 per day

Project team member’s salary (average) $300 per day

Project manager’s salary $600 per day

My Instructions

So basically what I need is the tasks for the project. From starting the project to finish. As stated above, the number of tasks should be around 80 or above. The tasks should:

· make sense

· Milestones are shown (milestones are already provided in the project charter below and are to be applied in the tasks)

· Duration are shown and generally realistic (Starting date/end date)

· Resources assigned to the tasks (Who’s going to do it/who’s responsible for it) – regarding this area, the stakeholders are shown in the project charter created below. So what should be done is assign those stakeholders to the tasks.

· Create this using spreadsheet or if you have one, Microsoft Project.

Below is the project charter for the project. But there’s one correction for this project charter. “Milestones related to systems purchase/installation/testing, staff relocation, and vehicle purchases are missing.” Please apply these milestones to the tasks.

Project Charter Scope Overview

The purpose of this project is to build a new distribution centre for ABC Ltd, a national grocery retailer. This new distribution centre will replace 5 existing regional centres will streamline the whole supply chain for ABC.

The objectives include:

· Selection of the location on which the new building will be constructed

· Employing and training of additional staff to fill the remaining vacancies

· Acquiring of machines and vehicles for the operations of the company

Business Case

The purpose of this project is to build a new distribution centre for ABC Ltd, a national grocery retailer and will streamline the whole supply chain for ABC. The replacement of the 5 existing centres and constructing it to one will centralize the production of the company.

Some of the benefits of this include;

· Efficient decision making

· Smaller workforce

· Easier implementation of policies

· Uniform products and services

· Consistent organisational system

· Cost effective

In addition, the construction of the new centre is expected to improve overall profits by $2 million per year.

Milestone Schedule and Deliverables

Risks and Assumptions

Stakeholders