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Scheduling strategy

9 replies [Last post]
Wed, 2007-04-18 04:28
Aidan Eagers
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Hi,

I am working on a Pharma project and there are a lot of WBS that are not really related so the project cannot really be linked as one project with one completion float.
Is it reasonable to monitor float on one activity at the end of each WBS, that way any movement in the project can be seen. I know this is not the usual practice but management want to see a schedule, now, now, now but without enough of the information being provided to produce the right structure.

Thanks for any comments
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Replies

Wed, 2007-04-18 08:10
#1
Stephen Devaux
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Aidan,

In work I’ve done for Drug Information Association, the cost of delay in bringing an average pharma product to market is estimated at about $32. Per second. About $4.6 million per week. I don’t know how much it is for your particular product (if it’s the next Lipitor, add a couple of zeroes!), but you should find out.

If you input constraining dates, it is crucial to quantify their CLUBs (Cost of Leveling with Unresolved Bottlenecks), i.e., how much these constraints are costing by delaying the CPM critical path and project completion. This may allow you to:

1. Justify decisions that would ameliorate the constraints.
2. Look awfully good by showing how many millions of extra dollars your planning and decision-making is adding to the project profit.

Good luck.
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Wed, 2007-04-18 05:45
#2
Aidan Eagers
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I agree, we have a design team who are shooting specs at the procurement guy without much thought for a plan so even if the schedule was built the idealistic way i would end up constraining dates anyway.
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Wed, 2007-04-18 05:37
#3
Anoon Iimos
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Aidan,

IMO, there’s no other way but to follow your constrained procurement dates, this is out of your control and you can never nail down the completion dates of each of your WBS if these procurement dates were not defined.
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Wed, 2007-04-18 05:24
#4
Aidan Eagers
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Thanks Karim, appreciate your opinion
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Wed, 2007-04-18 05:17
#5
Karim Mounir
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Aidan,

It’s the normal way to drive the procurement dates back from the finish date but actually during updates and the project’s life cycle these originated dates are always delayed many times in the project.
So i didn’t face this except maybe if we are dealing with a subcontractor scope (eg. elevators).

and btw it’s KARIM not KAMIR.

Regards,
Karim

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Wed, 2007-04-18 05:03
#6
Aidan Eagers
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I wish they would, i get a lot of headaches.

Cold up there?
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Wed, 2007-04-18 05:00
#7
Anoon Iimos
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you know the problem with pharma.. projects is the chemistry behind it. So you have to be careful with the WBS as you might label viagra with panadol!
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Wed, 2007-04-18 04:58
#8
Aidan Eagers
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Kamir,

In this case the WBS that i am treating as seperate are for a procurement cycle, for the instrumentation (small parts but still essential). I have each WBS linked to a milestone so that we get the instrumentation on time but they are not linked in a perfect consecutive order.

Have you come across many schedules that are drivin forward from constrained procurement dates? I know it is better to drive back from finish date required but our validation strategy has not been nailed down and this makes that difficult.

Aidan
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Wed, 2007-04-18 04:48
#9
Karim Mounir
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Hi Aidan,

Yes in some projects u can do this, eg. in a cement project the plant consists of departments which are not related to each other (in civil scope) and each department contains more than 1 building, so u link each building within its department and each department should be linked to the completion milestone independently.

HTH.

Regards,
Karim
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