Case #4

Dr. John Watage, deputy director of the family planning Research Center in Nigeria’s Over-The-River Providence, was assigned the task of organizing and training five teams of field workers to perform educational and outreach activities as part of a large project to demonstrate acceptance of a new method of birth control. These workers already had training in family planning education but must receive specific training regarding the new method of contraception. Two types of materials must also be prepared: (1) those for use in training the workers and (2) those for distribution in the field. Training faculty must be brought in and arrangements made for transportation and accommodations for the participants. Dr. Watage first called a meeting of his office staff. Together they identified the activities that must be carried out, their necessary sequences, and the time that they would require. Their results are displayed in Table 1. Louis Odaga, the chief clerk, noted that their project had to be completed in 60 days. Whipping out his solar-powered calculator, he added up the time needed. "no," Dr. Watage replied, "some of these tasks can go forward in parallel." "Be careful, though," warned Mr. Oglagadu, the chief nurse, "there aren’t that many of us to go around. There are only 10 of us in this office." "I can check whether we have enough heads and hands once I have tentatively scheduled the activities," Dr. Watage responded. "If the schedule is too tight, I have permission from the Pathminder Fund to spend some funds to speed it up, just so long as I can prove that it can be done at the least cost necessary. Can you help me prove that? Here are the costs for the activities with the elapsed time that we planned and the costs and times if we shorten them to an absolute minimum." Those data are given Table 2.

Table 1 Family Planning Research Center Activities

Table 2 Family Planning Research Center Costs

Discussion Questions

1. Some of the tasks in this project can be done in parallel. Prepare a diagram showing the required network of tasks and define the critical path. What is the length of the project without crashing?
2. At this point (Normal Time), can the project be done given the personnel constraints of 10 persons?
3. If the critical path is longer than 50 days, what is the least additional amounting that Dr. Watage can spend and still achieve this schedule objective (50 days)?

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