Product Design Project at NOKIA

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 1. 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 specification
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 specification. 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
bring all the components together, and a working prototype is built and tested. Finally in subproject
V, suppliers are selected and contracts are negotiated.
1. Draw a project network that includes all the activities.
2. Calculate the start and finish times for each activity and determine the minimum number
of weeks for completing the project. Find the activities that are on the critical path for
completing the project in the shortest time.
3. Identify slack in the activities not on the project critical path.
4. Your boss would like you to study the impact of making two changes to how the project
is organized. The first change involves using dedicated teams that would work strictly
in parallel on the activities in each subproject. For example, in subproject P (product
specification) the team would work on P1, P2, P3 and P4 all in parallel. In other words,
there would be no precedence relationship within a subproject all tasks within a
subproject would be worked on at the same time and each would take the same amount
of time as originally specified. With this new design, all the subprojects would be done
sequentially with P done first, then S, D, I, and finally V. What would be the expected
impact on how long it would take to complete the project if this change were made?
5. 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. 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?

6. Evaluate the impact of making these changes using criteria other than just the time to
complete the project. Do you think it would be in Nokias best interest to try to make
these changes in how it runs this and future cell phone design projects?

Exhibit 1. Work Breakdown Structure and Activities for the Cell Phone Design Project:
Major Subproject /Activities

Activity
Identification

Activity
Code

Dependency Duration
/
(Weeks)
Predecessor

Product specifications (P)

Market research
Overall product Specifications
Hardware
Software

P1
P2
P3
P4

A
B
C
D

P1
P2
P3

2
4
5
5

Supplier specifications (S)

Hardware
Software

S1
S2

E
F

P4
P4

5
6

Battery
Display
Camera
Outer cover

D1
D2
D3
D4

G
H
I
J

S1
S1
S1
D1, D2, D3

1
2
1
4

Product integration (I)

Hardware
User interface
Software coding
Prototype testing

I1
I2
I3
I4

K
L
M
N

D4
D2
I2
I1, I3

3
4
4
4

Subcontracting (V)
Suppliers selection
Contract negotiation

V1
V2

O
P

S1, S2
I4, V1

10
2

Product design (D)