...Summary – Resource Allocation 1. The universal aspects of the way strategic commitments get made fall into two categories: a. Organizational Structure. At any company, responsibility is divided up among various individuals and units has vital consequences for how strategy gets made. * Knowledge is dispersed. For any given strategic question, relevant expertise resides in scattered, sometimes unexpected parts of a corporation. * Power is dispersed. * Roles determine perspectives. Miles’s Law – the notion that where you stand is a function of where you sit—is central to how strategy gets made in practice. b. Decision-making processes. Just as important, the way decisions are made throughout an organization has vital consequences for strategy. * Processes span multiple levels; activities proceed on parallel, independent tracks. * Processes are iterative. Crafting strategy is an iterative, real-time process; commitments must be made, then either revised or stepped up as new realities emerge. 2. Six ways that senior managers can direct the strategy of their firm by better understanding the resource allocation process: a. Understand the people whose names are on the proposals you read. b. Recognize the strategic issue and make sure it is addressed. c. When a debate reflects fundamental differences about the strategy, intervene. d. Use operational managers to get work done across divisional lines. e. The leadership has...
Words: 564 - Pages: 3
...Subject: Red Zuma Project Resources and Resource Assignments Introduction: This part of the project deals with identifying and assigning resources and resolving over allocation of resources. Details: Part A 1. Over-allocated Resources As per the resource sheet, resources that are over-allocated are as follows: * 4 Marketing Specialist * 4 Design Engineers * 4 Industrial Engineers 2. Resolve Over-allocation of Resources Assuming that the project is time constrained, resolving over allocation by leveling slack leads to following changes: * Slack time from following tasks is used up for resource leveling. WBS | Task Name | Original Total Slack | Slack after Resource Leveling | 1.3 | Manufacturing Study | 10 | 0 | 1.5 | Detailed Marketing Plan | 179 | 134 | 1.6 | Manufacturing Process | 55 | 0 | 1.9 | Lab Test Prototypes | 9 | 0 | * The four Marketing Specialists are no more over-allocated. * All the tasks having slack (in the initial schedule) have been re-scheduled for resource leveling. 3. Impact of leveling within slack The ‘Manufacturing Process task’ and ‘Lab Test Prototype task’ do not have slack and are now on the critical path. Since more tasks are on the critical path as compared to the earlier network, it has become more sensitive due to leveling within slack. 4. Resource Constrained Implications Based on the current resource allocation and no time constraint, the project...
Words: 574 - Pages: 3
...For hotel sales and marketing professionals limited resources are allocated to presenting properties in the sales channels that will be the most productive in their comp set--be they print ads, direct mail, public relations, sales calls or electronic distribution channel participation and advertising. A sales professional strives to select the most cost-effective and compelling channels that will in turn bring guests to their door and fill their available rooms at a competitive price. This resource allocation process requires assessment of each potential business source’s target audience, opportunities for participation, probable production and costs. This applies to electronic distribution just as it does to utilizing central reservation call centers. Narrowing the focus to the electronic distribution channels, the two broadest categories are global distribution systems (GDS) and Internet web sites. The GDSs, of which there are four major competitors including Amadeus, Galileo/Apollo, Sabre and Worldspan, originated as private networks for use by travel agents. In the 35 years since their inception, they have grown to serve a worldwide clientele who use nearly 500,000 access points. They have expanded from listing only air flights to presenting the full array of travel services. Recently, they have moved to make their rich databases of travel service information available to web sites – both their own and others managed by third parties. Key considerations in evaluating...
Words: 1334 - Pages: 6
...CHAPTER 6 Allocating Resources to the Project In this chapter we consider the problem of allocating physical and human resources to projects.* The physical and human resources are granted to and used by the project in order to meet the project’s performance objectives. The amount of resources that can be allocated, of course, depends on the timing of the allocation as well as on the total supply of resources available for allocation. Mainly, resource allocation concerns how we allocate specific, limited resources to specific activities (or projects) when there are competing demands for the same limited resources. Projects compete with each other for the same resources in two different ways. First, consider a resource that is limited but is not consumed when used, the services of a specific technical specialist for instance. The problem here is which project gets to use the resource first and which must wait. Second, consider a resource that is limited and is consumed when used, a specific chemical reagent for instance. In this case, the second project may have to wait until more of the reagent can be purchased and delivered. In both cases, the project that must wait may suffer a schedule delay that makes it late. Just as projects may compete for resources, different activities of the same project may compete. Two or more concurrent activities might require the same personnel, or equipment, or even work space. One activity will be given priority, and the other(s) must wait. In...
Words: 18123 - Pages: 73
...monitor implementation and outcomes. This guide has the follow ing sections: Chapter 1: Technical aspects to project management What is a project? What is project management? Project stakeholders T he project life cycle Defining the project o Defining the project scope o Creating the work breakdown structure o Estimating cost and developing budget Constructing a project network plan o Project schedule Chapter 2. Managerial aspects of project management Project manager Project risk management Project communication management Project quality management Chapter 1. Technical aspects to project management What is a project? A project is an assignment/task/job that has to be undertaken and completed within a set time, budget, resources and performance specifications designed to meet the needs of stakeholder and beneficiaries For example The Canadian International Donor Agency (CIDA) has donated R7.5 million to provide RDP homes to 50 fam ilies living in the Joe Slovo inform settlement. On 6 February 2004, the agency al signed a contract with the Department of Housing to implem ent the project. The following requirem ents, am ongst others were set in the contract: 1. The RDP houses must meet specifications in line w ith government policy. 2. In order to ensure sustainability and affordability for the 50 families, the head of each of the 50 families m ust be given skills development...
Words: 3042 - Pages: 13
...and prior discussions in school, we’ve come up with the terms, corporate transparency and efficient allocation of resources. We thought this would be a great and somewhat interesting issue particularly on the part of the students since we would benefit the most from what the university has to offer. First, let’s define corporate transparency. Corporate transparency is the availability of all relevant information to stakeholders and end-users. So, this leads us to the most important question yet to be answered. Is corporate transparency present in the University of San Carlos? How does it affect the system of resource allocation? The study is conducted in the University of San Carlos. Interviews with different levels of employees were made to get a broader view of the university’s transparency and its effects on resource allocation. It would also be of much help to us to be well- informed of what is going on inside the school because we are directly affected by it. Top management is responsible for the final say in all decisions affecting the school and this is often accompanied by miscommunication and misinterpretation of information when it goes down to the middle and lower management levels. The results show that majority of the interviewees believe that USC, as a whole, is only partially transparent. According to them, incidents of improper allocation of resources...
Words: 4220 - Pages: 17
...Health Care and Social Responsibility June 10, 2012 Administrative Ethics Biomedical ethical issues are seen frequently in the news and are in constant scrutiny. The demand for social responsibility is high and available resources are limited. Healthcare leaders are faced with numerous administrative issues regarding patient privacy, research, confidentiality, and terminal illness. Much debate has surrounded medical spending on the terminally ill, such as the cost and allocation of resources toward end-of-life care. Choosing between prolonged life and quality of life are two seemingly difficult decisions to make. Nonetheless, it is difficult to base one’s opinion until cancer has taken over one’s life. A close look at administrative issues surrounding end-of-life care will demonstrate the impact on a population, ethical and legal implications, potential solutions to the problem, and managerial responsibilities. Impact of Ethical Issue on the Population The Northern Mariana Islands (NMI) is a part of the United States territory since its establishment of commonwealth in political union and is home to approximately 44,000 people (Central Intelligence Agency, 2012). Because of the increase in chronic diseases and lack of available resources, several residents are referred to go off the island to seek health care in Guam and Hawaii (Doty, 2012). However, the medical referral program has a crucial problem with financing treatment at referral facilities. Some patients...
Words: 1226 - Pages: 5
...Fairness in Reward Allocation Name of the student: Name of the University: Course ID: Author’s note: Introduction The discussion of the essay is associated with the fairness in reward allocation that depends on various processes. Most of the organizations are facing the problem to implement the transparent process during the reward allocation because of the individual perception. The theory regarding the fairness also suggest to implement a structured way that will adhere to the policy of the organization so that no employees remain with the dilemma that justice is coming in the proper way. The theory is used to understand the behavioral aspect of the employees and their superior where researchers have given several feedbacks that influence the process (Lund, Scheer and Kozlenkova 2013). The argument is structured in such a way that helps to understand the several aspects of the importance of the organizational fairness in the compensation management, role of organizational fairness in reward allocation, factors that are influencing fairness in reward allocation, impact of reward distribution on employees and how fairness can be achieved within the process. All the processes are discussed with the view of several researches that establish the fact of issues and solutions of the reward allocation. At the end of the essay, every topic is summarized with the findings that could help to enhance the reward allocation. Discussion Operating an organization always needs fairness...
Words: 2540 - Pages: 11
...References | 15 | 6. | Appendices | | INTRODUCTION Budgeting in the public sector has evolved over the years. After Independence, we started with line-item budgeting that focused on expenditure. Under this approach, ministries and agencies were assessed on their ability to spend the approved allocation within a given year. Moreover, it lacked coordinated planning, performance measurements and systematic evaluation. Subsequently, a more results oriented Programme and Performance Budgeting System (PPBS) was adopted in 1969, where the focus shifted to outputs, with resources allocated for specific programmes and activities based on priorities. Systemic problems, however, continued to persist. There was lack of accountability, while decision making was highly centralized. To address these problems, the PPBS was improved and introduced as the Modified Budgeting System (MBS) in 1990. The system expounded the concept of “let managers manage” and held them accountable for their performance. However, even under this system, the emphasis was still on output, with each ministry and agency focusing on delivering its programmes and projects. This gave rise to duplication of efforts and resources across ministries. It soon became apparent that there were weak linkages between policy formulation, budgeting process as well as project implementation and evaluation. There was also little or no integration between operating and development budget. More importantly, the system could not meet...
Words: 3861 - Pages: 16
...This nugget, the next in 3.0 Managing Resources and Assignments, is focused on 3.2 and 3.3. 3.2 is going to be a bit of a review. We've already talked about the Task Types, Fixed Work, Fixed Units and and Fixed Duration, but we're going to apply the Resources. So 00:00:19 we are going to assign the Resources that we've already created in the previous nugget and we're going to further explore W=UxD because they all work together. Depending on the Task Type, depending on the Units, the Resources, depending on the Work and the Duration, it's going to directly impact on the schedule calculations. So this nugget is really going to put it 00:00:42 all together. We already have our Tasks in Microsoft Project. We already have our Resources in Microsoft Project. This nugget 3.2, 3.3 is really going to put it all together and create our effective Project Schedule. And we'll start off in this basic plan that I have called Basic Scheduling Project. It's available to you on CBTNuggets.com. 00:01:06 And if we look at it quickly, there are five Tasks in this project plan, created in two parallel dependency streams - Tasks 1 through Task 3 and Tasks 4 through Task 5. And if we look at my Resource Sheet I have a number of resources. I have three human resources all 00:01:27 of Type Work, Initials R1 of R3 and only R1 and R3 are available to the project full time. And I'm not going to get into the breaking down of the resources into probably a more realistic 90% simply because it makes...
Words: 5511 - Pages: 23
...of PB in Brazil, PB was initially introduced in the 1980s to address the issue of political exclusion and corruption of Brazil’s military dictatorship in hope for political renewal. This program functions primarily upon the participation of its citizens, including those that have no political access, on the allocation of public resources and the use of state authority. He states that the citizens are forced to make choices regarding the allocation of resources and this directly alters government spending as direct participation of the citizen condone new areas of spending – through adoption of “Quality of Life Index” – a measure that emphasis on social justice concern by prioritizing resource allocation to districts with higher poverty and limited infrastructure. PB program further extend to European countries such as France, Germany, and Spain, as well as the United States and Asian countries (Shah, 2007). PB in Europe was introduced to address the issue of growing difficulties of social demands, continual public investment cuts and to rebuild the trust of its citizens – focusing on the aspects of modernization and improvement of public modern resources efficiency (Allegretti & Herzberg, 2004). In countries that implements PB, some notable side effects has been clear, that is PB helps poor citizen to resolve their mutual matters by encouraging these citizens to participate in political field (Wampler, 2012). Though it is evident that PB promotes evenness, getting...
Words: 444 - Pages: 2
...DAO 102_Planning_Programming_Budgeting paper Department of Defense Decision Support Systems1.2. Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) Process | | The purpose of the PPBE process is to allocate resources within the Department of Defense. It is important for program managers and their staffs to be aware of the nature and timing of each of the events in the PPBE process, since they may be called upon to provide critical information that could be important to program funding and success. In the PPBE process, the Secretary of Defense establishes policies, strategy, and prioritized goals for the Department, which are subsequently used to guide resource allocation decisions that balance the guidance with fiscal constraints. The PPBE process consists of four distinct but overlapping phases: Planning. The planning phase of PPBE is a collaborative effort by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff, in coordination with DoD components. It begins with a resource-informed articulation of national defense policies and military strategy known as the Guidance for the Development of the Force (GDF). The GDF is used to lead the overall planning process. This process results in fiscally constrained guidance and priorities - for military forces, modernization, readiness and sustainability, and supports business processes and infrastructure activities - for program development in a document known as the Joint Programming Guidance. The Joint Programming Guidance...
Words: 909 - Pages: 4
...diverse products. The fact that there is huge variance in the number of units produced per production run- it is 375 for valves and 18 for flow controllers per production run. This shows the reason for high overheads cost too. Hence it calls for checking the cost allocation system of the company. Since Sippican produces three different products which comprise of different components, processes for all three need to be customised and refined to bring in any kind of standards. Variations in batch size owing to the machining constraints etc. are brought in by a disparity in the time required for production runs of all three products. Even on increasing the price of the flow controllers the demand for the product did not go down, this gives an indication of the faulty pricing system. Because of these reasons it seems that we should check the cost allocation system of the company. 2. Calculate the practical capacity and the capacity cost for each of the Sippican’s resources: production and setup employees, machines, receiving and production control employees, shipping and packaging employees, and engineers. a) The first thing to do here is to find the actual capacity thats being used in each and every resource. For this purpose teh total number of units is first defined. Thereafter the total number of hours are found out which is available with the company as the number of days working and teh number of hours per day is available. Once that’s done teh...
Words: 1398 - Pages: 6
...activities, they used 5,000 hours of housekeeping services. 1. What is the value of the cost pool? The value of cost pool is 100,000 2. What is the allocation rate if:? a. Patient services revenue is used as the cost driver? Allocation Rate = Cost / Patient service revenue = 100,000 / 5,000,000 = 0.02 per patient service revenue b. Hours of housekeeping services is used as the cost driver? Allocation Rate = Cost / Book keeping service = 100,000 / 5,000 = 20 per housekeeping hours 3. What is a cost-volume-profit(CVP) analysis and why is it useful to health services managers? Cost-volume-profit analysis is a simple but flexible tool for exploring potential profit based on cost strategies and pricing decisions. While it may not provide detailed analysis, it can prevent "do-nothing" management paralysis by providing insight on an overview basis. Even entities without a profit goal find CVP useful. Governmental agencies use the analysis to determine the level of service appropriate for projected revenues. Nonprofit agencies, increasingly stipulating fees for service, can explore fee-pricing options; in many cases, the recipients are especially price-sensitive due to income or health concerns. The agency can use CVP to explore the options for efficient allocation of...
Words: 281 - Pages: 2
...the beginning. This affected the overall strategy. Robert feels uncomfortable with the financial projections for the e-books strategic initiative. Will X. Harper: A well-established and well-known author on the �A� list, Will has reservations about e-books and is leading what has become known as the �author�s opposition group.� These are some of the few issues permeating the HK publishing and its new strategy. McGill, CEO, has to play some politics in order to move ahead with the e-book publishing project. While selecting projects for implementation in an organization, a major factor that influences project selection, funding, resource allocation or prioritization is the extent of individual and organizational politics. Organizational politics can be defined as actions by individuals or groups to acquire, develop and use power and other resources in order to obtain preferred outcomes when there is uncertainty or disagreement over choices. (Gray, 2006). Project Selection Committee (PSC) It is pretty clear who the PSC people are in the scenario. M. McGill, CEO; R. Smith, CFO; J. Peters, SVP of B & D; D. Joyce, ExVP Global Strategy; M. Simmons, ExVP; M. Goldfarb, SVP Marketing; M. Evans, CIO and P. Ross, Production Manager. All of these individuals have an input as to which project will be implemented. Project Selection Committee is expected to enable the company choose projects to align with strategic objectives (Gray, 2006). Project Structure Project...
Words: 574 - Pages: 3
