Project Plan for New Premium Soap Range: A Detailed Analysis

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This project details the development of a new premium soap range.

Project Management
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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Project Context............................................................................................................................................4
Rationale for proposed plan and choice of methods....................................................................................5
Pestle Analysis............................................................................................................................................6
Political...................................................................................................................................................6
Economic.................................................................................................................................................6
Social.......................................................................................................................................................6
Technological..........................................................................................................................................7
Legal........................................................................................................................................................7
Environmental.........................................................................................................................................7
Work Breakdown Structure.........................................................................................................................8
Gantt chart.................................................................................................................................................11
Risk Analysis.............................................................................................................................................14
Type of risks..........................................................................................................................................14
Risk Management Strategy....................................................................................................................14
RACI Matrix.............................................................................................................................................16
Stakeholder Management Strategy............................................................................................................17
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................19
References.................................................................................................................................................20
Appendices................................................................................................................................................22
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List of Tables
Table 1 Allocation of Costs.........................................................................................................................5
Table 2 Work Breakdown Structure (Referred to appendices 2).................................................................7
Table 3 Gantt Chart...................................................................................................................................12
Table 4 Strategy for managing Stakehlders...............................................................................................17
Table 5 RACI matrix.................................................................................................................................25
List of figures
Figure 1 Factors of Pestle framework........................................................................................................22
Figure 2 Classification of Work Breakdown Structure..............................................................................23
Figure 3 Projected Gantt Chart..................................................................................................................23
Figure 4 Types of risks involved...............................................................................................................24
Figure 5 Types of stakeholders..................................................................................................................26
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Introduction
Project management can be defined as the process which is required to manage the time of a
project and ensures the completion of the same on time. It can also be described as the exercise
of introducing, planning, controlling, executing and completing the work of a particular task or
work to meet the goals and desired success at within the limited period of time. A project can be
termed as a temporary attempt designed to achieve predetermined goals and objectives of an
organization. The nature of the projects lies with the business operations in an usual manner
which are permanent, repetitive and semi-permanent activities to develop the services and the
products. In exercise, the proper management of desired approaches of production needs the
development of different management and technical skills.
The main challenge for project manager is to achieve all the goals and objectives of a project
within the given timeframe and appropriate as per the requirements. This report includes the
project management regarding the development of a project plan which is required to be
presented to the Senior Management Team containing the activities related to research,
expansion and development of the new range of premium soaps. The report is developed using
the six main project management methods and techniques and analyzing their impact in on the
final development of the product. Each technique or methods is defined in the context of the
organizational goals. The available risks are identified and a strategy has also been provided to
manage the same. A stakeholder management strategy has also been provided which can be
helpful in management the key stakeholders of the project. At the end, a conclusion has also been
drawn containing the essence and learning of the entire project.
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Project Context
The project is related to the develop a plan which is required by the company to develop a new
range of premium soap. The development of this plan requires the extensive level of research of
the market conditions to identify the suitable time and conditions to launch the project. The
project manager also need to identify the organizational goals to develop these new products and
then to identify the available resources. On the basis of such identification, the need to the extra
resources can be identified and the plan can be developed. The most important task is to identify
the risk hazards for the projected product. For this purpose, competitor analysis is required and
the environmental conditions that whether they are in support of the product or not. The selected
Company has set out the estimated budget for this project is £2.5 million. The projected time of
completing the project is 8 months. Therefore, it is required to plan all the activities and
functions in such a manner so that they can be com0pleted on time. The quality of the research
and time taken by the project manager is considerable by the management and stakeholders of
the company.
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Rationale for proposed plan and choice of methods
This proposal is developed to plan the development of a new range of soup by a food processing
organization. The organization is working in the food industry and in the process of developing
varieties of premium quality soups which is a new product for the organization but similar to its
main working stream. The main challenge in creating this proposal is the estimation of time
taken by each step of the product development process as it contains a number of tasks. The
proposal is developed in a report form which firstly contains the analysis of market and
environmental conditions which is further followed by describing the available risks, work
breakdown structure, Gantt chart and stakeholder’s management strategy. The plan aims at
clarifying the whole process of development of the product to the internal as well as external
stakeholders along with the government authorities and food related organizations.
The authorities and responsibilities related to the main tasks are described with the help of RACI
matrix. It defines the personal whois responsible, accountable, consulted and informed about
each core responsibility.
The project is required to be completed within 8 months as the organization is the consideration
to launch the product in the starting of winter season. After considering this factor, the whole
process of the project is planned as per the time duration of 8 months and a fix time period is
given to the ach step of product development. Total budget is available for this project is £2.5
million. Thus the allocation of cost to the different activities has been done in as per the below
mentioned explanation:
Table 1 Allocation of Costs
Task Cost Allocated
Research and Development Department £80000
Marketing Department £70000
Cost of preparing new recipe (For 15 Ltr.) £500
Operations Department £60000
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Pestle Analysis
The impact of the environmental factors on the development of the proposed product can be
defined as follows (referred to appendices 1):
Political: There are a number of political factors that may affect the food industry of UK. The
future decisions related to taxations and the legislation of food industry would definitely have a
great impact of the strategies and policies of the organization. The present regulation and
legislations have influence on the employment, competition, grocery and food safety, health
issues and financial services. The food organizations of the UK are highly indulged to follow the
legislations related to food hygiene provided by the Food Standards Agency and General Food
Law Regulation. The competition in United Kingdom in controlled and observed by two
government authorities named as the Office of fair Trading and The Competition Commission.
These two bodies ensure if the organizations are complying with the competition practices and
laws or not. The role of these two bodies is to ensure fair trade practices between the supplies
and supermarkets along with controlling the competition between competitors (Ababio and
Lovatt, 2015).
Economic: The level of unemployment and the rate of economic growth can impact the food
industry in a significant manner. The healthy foods and soups are high in prices in comparison to
fast food products and ready to eat products. Along with this, convenience of ready to eat
products is alwaysoverweighing to the unhealthiness. This fact can also impact the development
and marketing of the proposed type of soups.
Social: In the UK, the average percentage and age of retired customers are rising day by day.
This rising trend has a number of impacts of the food industry. Firstly, it is required to be noted
that older people consumes less in comparison to younger people. The lower income is the main
reason behind it. Further, the elder customers like to shop from the cheaper food retailers. It
impacts the market share of the rest of the organizations in the industry. This age group also
needs the food to be delivered at home which is beneficial for the food retailers providing home
delivery services. Thus, the organization needs to consider all the facts while developing and
pricing the range of all type of soups (Yudha et al., 2018).
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Technological: Research and development is the main and important function of a food
processing company. The level and need of research and development program is determined by
scale of the company and the developments taking place in the external environment of the
company. Therefore the company needs to consider the technological advancements to make the
product more competitive and attractive. Introduction of veg and non-veg both type of soups can
be beneficial for the organizations and the ingredients for the both should be developed and
extracted in fully hygienic environment. The equipment and machines should be used with
marinating proper health hygiene.
Legal: The organization needs to fulfill the legal requirements to operate the business
successfully. The management needs to focus on investment regulations, company law, and
environmental law in the process of developing a new product. The project and production
managers are also required to follow the process, production, marketing of vegetable related
regulations. Along with this, in order to ensure the safety of the workers and safety,
environmental protection, labor law and antitrust laws are required to be applied by the
organization.
Environmental: As the development is taking place in science and biology, due to the
increasing needs of the gains and healthy life style, the food producing companies are facing
problems related to the development of healthy and tasty food products for the customers. The
organizations are also facing problems related to the use of new techniques and genetically
modified (GM) foods. The use of such foods can result in decreasing the cost of the products as
they are easy to grow but there can be risk related to the severe health issues to the human beings
which are unknown yet. Thus, the management of ABC Company has the major challenge to
develop such kind of soups which are healthy to the human beings as the same time the prices
should also be pocket friendly without using GM foods (Fozer et al., 2017).
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Work Breakdown Structure
Table 2 Work Breakdown Structure (Referred to appendices 2)
Task Description Responsibility
Preparing the research and
development team to
collaborate in the development
of new product.
To ensure that all the
employees related to the
project must understand that
they are expected to
collaborate and participate in
the new product development
with insights and ideas from
their point of view. Thus, to
develop the process of
ideation and collect the ideas
to validate the benefits
(Robinson et al., 2018).
Research and Development
Manager
Define the core idea and
objectives behind the
development of new product.
The identification,
development and evaluation
process is also communicated
to the related team employees.
Defining the main idea and
frame new services and
products related ideas through
process to ask inputs and
efforts from marketing and
technical sources, portfolio
analysis, evaluation system for
the proposed varieties of
soups, problem analysis,
simulations and modeling,
marketing scenarios,
technological assisted
creativity, individual
suggestions, risk assessment
Top Level Management
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and stakeholder management.
Understanding the needs of
customers
Focus groups and interviews
are held to find out the settings
and needs for available
possible applications
(Andersen, 2016).
Research and Development
Team along with the
cooperation of marketing
team.
Eliminate the fear of
roadblocks and failure
Communicate that
development of the new
product teams aims at phased
information to the
organizations.
Management
Time management Clearly demonstrate that time
to be consumed in market
research and proposed time of
project life cycle results in
success of the new products
(Tuli and Shankar, 2015).
Project manager
Integrate the Product with the
issues of process
To ensure that the
development of new product
can go hand in hand with
normal business process and
does not distinct itself from
the routine business activities.
Product and quality assurance
manager along with operations
manager
Process and technology
innovation
The encouragement of
developed new technology in
the all business operations.
Technical Manager
Identification of new
processes and reengineering of
the existing processes as per
the requirements
Considering the new process
of marinating inventory,
procurement, production to
ensure the effectiveness of
new product development
Production Manager
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strategy (Chang and Taylor,
2016).
Alignment To ensure that the new range
of soups can align with the
main business processes
which include designing,
configuration and testing
management.
Production and operations
managers
Identification of issues related
to logistics and implications
To ensure that the product
logistics must be considered as
the important part of project
cost and plan (Tonchia, 2018).
Financial management
department
Weighted scoring and
strategic alignment
To ensure that each and every
project is examined for
reliability with the business
plans by using weighted
scoring model.
Top level management
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Gantt chart
The activities and process carried out in the development of the range of soups are listed as
below. The total estimated time for completion of the project is 8 months. The planning starts
with the proposal given to the stakeholders. The management needs to obtain approval form the
stakeholders at first at the time of thinking of developing any type of new product. After this the
approval from government as well as food and Safety Corporation is required as the company is
going to develop food related product. All other tasks are less time consuming but designing the
process of production and manufacturing of the products are time consuming tasks. The time
period which is planned for each task is based on the resources and manpower available within
the organization. All steps of the project plan and projected time taken by them can be described
with the help of below mentioned Gantt chart (Referred to appendices 3).
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