Product Growth and Improving the Decision-Making Process Project Paper Example

Introduction

I am going to outline the basics of a project put in place by Flowserve manufacturing company to drive new product growth by improving the decision-making process and innovation, known as Flowserve corporation project. The company had struggled with optimizing labor productivity, tracking projects and controlling costs for a long time before implementing this project.

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The scope of the project

The company has over 19000 employees, and it is a recognized manufacturer and supplier of products such as valves, pumps, automation and seals as well as different services to power chemical, oil and gas among other companies. The project has a large pool of investors and resources that aid the delivery of products and services to the target markets faster. The project makes use of an automated review process to manage the work more efficiently. This process also speeds up the delivery time to the market thereby mitigating problems caused by launch delays in the past few years. The process has also helped the company control its costs, and the success assessment process is more effective than before.

Four stage planning process

The Project planning process describes how the project is conducted. The planning process guides the project manager to identify what the project should be, regarding its goals and objectives and about and why it should be implemented (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). The first stage of the planning process is developing a clear project statement. This statement sets boundaries by listing the anticipated primary results of the project and a specific completion date. For instance, Flowserve corporation project's comment was, "To deliver more than the complete portfolio of reliable valves, pumps, and seals available by the second quarter of 2014."

The second stage is developing objectives to set boundaries. This stage is important because the first stage does not include all the desired outcomes and constraints of the project. Designing the projects objectives shapes and fine-tunes the image of the project (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). To promote the best objectives for this project, I would outline clear standards and measures of performance as well as activities that need to be monitored regularly against them. A project's objectives may seem obvious sometimes. For instance, a plan that sets a goal such as "working towards cost reduction" may look obvious but it is not. I would make sure to include such and other assumed objectives such as: "employ new engineers every fall as project assistants." Also, I would involve critical stakeholders of the project in developing the project objectives including other project members, significant shareholders and project managers and assistants for idea sharing (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017).

Stage three involves defining the tasks using a work breakdown structure. The project statement together with the set objectives would help me outline the necessary functions to achieve them. I would then use the list of identified tasks to create an inventory of the project's main accomplishments. This then will guide the process of project planning.

Finally, I will identify the required resources to accomplish the project's goals and objectives. This stage involves identifying and analyzing the necessary resources for the project to be implemented effectively and efficiently (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). Some minor requirements are mainly overlooked, but Flowserve corporation project did not ignore them. For instance, the objectives set for the project included hiring new sub-project managers along the way to coordinate the project's assignment in different locations. Therefore, during resource identification and allocation, the team allocated some resources to mentoring the new sub-project managers. This promoted the accuracy of the project's budget.

The project led to the improvement of the company's principal activities. For instance, the project helped the company through innovation and cost savings for its customers. The project supported the company move over 14 million oil barrels, primarily through the Alaska pipeline and this contributed to a new irrigation system that supplies water for Thailand to over 3 million acres of land. The project also helped the company adopt new technologies and pioneering business applications. However, the plan failed to deliver on time. Thus, the policy has been renewed more than one time to meet deadlines. The critical roles of a project manager at this project include linking the internal organization to the customers, translating and delivering products and services according to the customer's demand and expectations in all aspects including time, quality, the scope of supply and customer satisfaction among others.

Conclusion

I consider the project a success because it achieved most of its objectives such as being able to minimize the costs to the customers and optimizing labor productivity. The project helped the company develop a comprehensive portfolio that enabled customers to spend less time evaluating the products and services as well as shopping. The collection also helped the company create some of the best custom and standard solutions for the customers. Sides, the innovation is driven by the project has helped the company become more than just a supplier of pumps, valves, and seals as it maximizes the customers' systems and the far-reaching effects of operations through data understanding, an increase in the number f QRC experts.

References

Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons