Digital Project Environment: Tools & Techniques Individual Assignment Brief | University of Salford Manchester

Assessment task details and instructions

The CEO at your company has instructed you as their Project Director to provide them a fully resourced project schedule for the project based on the information provided in the following pages.

Project Information

You are the project director of a software development company, and your team has won a UK government bid to work with manufacturers in Aerospace, Rail and Automotive to create a software application to improve UK cross-sector manufacturing collaboration and overall efficiency. 

You must work with multiple sectors and their stakeholders to create a solution that has three main outputs:

1. A digital tool that will enable potential participating businesses to collaborate and share data. The tool should allow for cross-sector Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs) supply-chain collaboration. Functions should include the capture, consolidation and visualisation of supply-chain data from different companies.  
2. An App that will drive SME engagement and incentivise users to maintain profile data, connect with other network users and drive collaboration enabling organisations to share news posts, or company specific updates, capture survey/questionnaire data (e.g Linkedin or similar). 
3.  A diagram (cross sector taxonomy) that shows the shared characteristics between the sectors) 
   It us recommended that the app would utilise Machine Learning based on the taxonomy diagram that will optimise user experience & post relevance. The incorporation of AI should automatically recommend areas for collaborative work. 

Background 

There is an immediate need for granular supply-chain intelligence and proactive risk mitigation through collaboration and focused intervention, to prevent UK aerospace, automotive and other SMEs from getting into unrecoverable financial difficulties. 

Following the recent COVID-19 pandemic, combined with drastic policy changes because of BREXIT, the Aerospace, Rail and Automotive sectors identified over-reliance on overseas supply-chains, emphasising need for onshoring and establishing localised ecosystems which will protect UK jobs and reduce carbon footprint. 

COVID-19 decimated these sectors and there is now a government requirement to protect skilled jobs and the future of supply-chains by accelerating cross-sector collaboration with other manufacturing sectors such as Rail and Logistics. 

To mitigate these impacts, UK aero/auto manufacturing businesses can no longer work in silos and compete as individual organisations. Instead, they must connect and collaborate with customers and suppliers so that they can compete as integrated, cross-sector manufacturing ecosystems, which enables organisations to focus on core competences, benefit from economies-of-scale and share knowledge with the overall aim of:

• Reduction of transport carbon footprint
•  Onshoring Manufacturing Supply
•  Providing UK companies and the government with industry data to focus policy and support, ensuring UK taxpayer's money deployed most effectively. 

The project will address significant barriers that inhibit growth of these cross-sector manufacturing ecosystems, such as supply-chain transparency, data and security. 

There is currently a lack of digitalised infrastructure to streamline the capture analysis of big data.

This could be achieved by developing a cross-sector supply-chain collaboration tool that will enable companies to work together and share performance data. The proposed tool solutions will be established within an app-store that will incentivise users to maintain data. For example, profile data and allow connectivity with other network users to drive collaboration. This could be underpinned by AI to optimise sourcing and supplier selection decisions. 

The project should also generate a cross-sector classification taxonomy which classifies companies, into groups based on similar production processes, products and behaviours.

That underpins the matchmaking AI, automatically recommending connections for work-packages, tenders and suggest innovation partners, new customers/suppliers based on interests and company profiles.

The overall aim is to improve supply chain visibility of UK Aerospace and Automotive supply-chains reducing sub-tier risks, increase onshoring opportunities and connecting suppliers with more opportunities such as Rail, sustainable transport and renewable energy supply-chains.

Your task: 

1.)  Based on the above information you will need to develop a full project plan in Microsoft Project

This schedule needs to include:

a)    Task Names
b)    Task durations, with justification
c)    Summary & Sub tasks, including Milestones
d)    At least one recurring task
e)    Task Dependencies
f)    Fully costed and Assigned Resources
g)    Summary of key project requirements. Including Work, Duration and Cost

You should take care that there are no resource or scheduling constraints within the project. 

2.)    For a work package within your MS project schedule; Create a Kanban or SCRUM board in the software of your choice. 

3.)    As part of this module, you will complete the Edumundo Chocolate factory simulation. You should attach evidence of a completed simulation in the appendices. You should also complete a 500 word reflective summary on what you have learnt from the simulation. This portfolio should analyse, the challenges encountered, and how they were overcome in the context of digital project planning. You should reflect on how your knowledge, skills, or attitudes in digital project planning have evolved.