London-Grand Bend Bicycle Tour Case Solution [Group A4]

Part 1:

MS Society is organizing a bicycle tour between London and Grand Bend, Ontario between July
24th and 25th. To determine the best route for the tour, Sarah Mann evaluated the two tentative
routes by determining whether the routes would be available to use during the tour dates. She
enquired about the construction plan from government officials and finalized on a route under
the assumption that the plan would get implemented on time. The biggest problem MS Society
was facing was that the construction work didn’t go as planned and now MS Society has to start
its planning again. In order to succeed, MS Society needs to plan systematically. It needs to plan
in a way that there is sufficient room to re-plan in case of emergencies. There are some steps that
they could have taken.

1. Delegation

Only Mann was working on all the tasks, this seems to have severely delayed things and with
delegation some subtasks at every point may have been done simultaneously.

2. Internal vs external processes

External processes related to the government and local authorities are not fully under their
control. Hence, not much can be done to minimize time spent on bureaucratic tasks by external
parties. Internal tasks, on the other hand, can be crashed to minimize time. A longer margin of
time needs to be expected when accounting for such tasks.

3. Simultaneous processes

Mann can also tweak the precedence flow in a way such that multiple tasks could be done in
parallel (like D, C and E simultaneously). This will change the process diagram and reduce the
critical path time.

We need to identify the critical path in the route planning in the scenarios. We will do this by
applying the following steps:

1. Draw the precedence diagram: Using exhibit 1, we will draw the precedence diagram for the
processes.
2. Forward pass: Estimating the earliest start and finish times for all the processes.
3. Backward pass: Estimate the latest start and finish times for all the processes.
4. Find the processes with a slack: This will tell us where we have room to crash the process
5. Find the critical path: From the above steps, we can determine the critical path
6. Adjust to reduce the completion time

Submitted to Prof. Debjit Roy in partial fulfilment of “Organizational Management 1” course at IIM Ahmedabad by study group A4 in Aug 2019
Part 2:

 To prepare the critical path method diagram, the given data on predecessors is used to create
a precedence diagram.
 The resultant precedence diagram is shown in Exhibit 1 at the end. Exhibit 2 shows the
Earliest Start (ES), Earliest Finish (EF), Latest Start (LS) and Latest Finish (LF) times for
each of the tasks.
 These calculations have been performed based upon the ‘Most Likely’ scenario of task
completion times.
 From the resultant calculations shown in Exhibit 2, we were able to calculate the Slack (LS-
ES) for each of the tasks.
 Then, the critical path of the process is found as the path with no slack time.
 The following are the observed 4 critical paths in the route-planning activity process:
 A-B-D-E-F-G-H-I-L-M-P-Q-R-S
 A-B-D-E-F-G-H-I-L-N-O-Q-R-S
 A-B-D-E-F-G-H-K-L-M-P-Q-R-S
 A-B-D-E-F-G-H-K-L-N-O-Q-R-S
 From the above analysis the following observations were made:
 There are two pairs of parallel activities that are of the same total duration. This
results in 4 (2×2) different critical paths. These pairs are highlighted above.
 In order to reduce the time of the overall process, reducing the time for the non-
highlighted tasks will work.
 If the highlighted activities are to be reduced, they need to be reduced in pairs of the
paths as well (eg. both I & K) since shortening any one task will not reduce the time
required for the critical path.

Part 3:

The above calculations were performed for both the Optimistic and Pessimistic scenarios.
Thereafter, we get the earliest finish time for the optimistic scenario is 32.6 days (rounded up to
33 days) and the earliest finish time for the pessimistic scenario is 85.1 days (rounded up to 86
days). The detailed calculations for the ES, EF, LS and LF times for Optimistic and Pessimistic
scenarios are shown in Exhibit 3 and Exhibit 4.

From this result, we can conclude that the required target of completion in 23 days is not possible
even in the most optimistic case. In order to meet the target, further adjustments or crashing
needs to be done.

Submitted to Prof. Debjit Roy in partial fulfilment of “Organizational Management 1” course at IIM Ahmedabad by study group A4 in Aug 2019
Part 4:

As Lori, we would incorporate information from previous instances of organizing such events
and make a better estimate of the times required for each task with the least deviation. We would
divide the tasks into smaller subtasks and pinpoint the exact subtasks which induce deviation in
the overall task. We could also identify certain parameters or events from past instances of
dealing with external parties that lead to delays or early completions and check which of those
events are applicable in the case before us.

These actions would improve the estimate of expected task durations and reduce the differences
between optimistic and pessimistic scenario estimates.

Submitted to Prof. Debjit Roy in partial fulfilment of “Organizational Management 1” course at IIM Ahmedabad by study group A4 in Aug 2019
Part 5:

For this part of the problem, we would be making the following assumptions:

 The probability of the optimistic case is very high to such an extent that hereafter only that
scenario would be significant enough to be considered.
 Overtime by other team members is available, although undesired.
 Tasks B & C, which involve interaction with external local authorities, are crash-able to
certain extent (here say, by 4 days).
 Using overtime from Mann and the other 5 team members, the task durations for F, G and H
are reducible by 1 day, 2 days and 3 days respectively.

If the above variations in the process are taken to be accomplishable, we should allocate more
overtime to help out Mann and complete all the tasks in time, thus crashing B, C, F, G, and H. If
the above crashes are made to the optimistic scenario, we would get the planning time down to
22.6 days (rounded up to 23 days).

Submitted to Prof. Debjit Roy in partial fulfilment of “Organizational Management 1” course at IIM Ahmedabad by study group A4 in Aug 2019
Exhibit 1:

Submitted to Prof. Debjit Roy in partial fulfilment of “Organizational Management 1” course at IIM Ahmedabad by study group A4 in Aug 2019
Exhibit 2: ‘Most Likely’ Duration Scenario

Task Name Duration Earliest Start Earliest Finish Latest Start Latest Finish Slack
A 2 0 2 0 2 0
B 20 2 22 2 22 0
C 15 2 17 7 22 5
D 1 22 23 22 23 0
E 1 23 24 23 24 0
F 5 24 29 24 29 0
G 7 29 36 29 36 0
H 11 36 47 36 47 0
I 1 47 48 47 48 0
J 1 47 48 49 50 2
K 1 47 48 47 48 0
L 2 48 50 48 50 0
M 0.5 50 50.5 50 50.5 0
N 0.1 50 50.1 50 50.1 0
O 0.5 50.1 50.6 50.1 50.6 0
P 0.1 50.5 50.6 50.5 50.6 0
Q 1 50.6 51.6 50.6 51.6 0
R 0.5 51.6 52.1 51.6 52.1 0
S 0.5 52.1 52.6 52.1 52.6 0

Exhibit 3: ‘Pessimistic’ Duration Scenario

Task Name Duration Earliest Start Earliest Finish Latest Start Latest Finish Slack
A 3 0 3 0 3 0
B 40 3 43 3 43 0
C 20 3 23 23 43 20
D 2 43 45 43 45 0
E 1 45 46 45 46 0
F 7 46 53 46 53 0
G 8 53 61 53 61 0
H 15 61 76 61 76 0
I 2 76 78 76 78 0
J 2 76 78 78.5 80.5 2.5
K 1 76 77 77 78 1
L 2.5 78 80.5 78 80.5 0
M 1 80.5 81.5 80.5 81.5 0
N 0.1 80.5 80.6 80.5 80.6 0
O 1 80.6 81.6 80.6 81.6 0
P 0.1 81.5 81.6 81.5 81.6 0
Q 2 81.6 83.6 81.6 83.6 0
R 1 83.6 84.6 83.6 84.6 0
S 0.5 84.6 85.1 84.6 85.1 0

Submitted to Prof. Debjit Roy in partial fulfilment of “Organizational Management 1” course at IIM Ahmedabad by study group A4 in Aug 2019
Exhibit 4: ‘Optimistic’ Duration Scenario

Task Name Duration Earliest Start Earliest Finish Latest Start Latest Finish Slack
A 0.8 0 0.8 0 0.8 0
B 9 0.8 9.8 0.8 9.8 0
C 9 0.8 9.8 0.8 9.8 0
D 1 9.8 10.8 9.8 10.8 0
E 0 10.8 10.8 10.8 10.8 0
F 4 10.8 14.8 10.8 14.8 0
G 5 14.8 19.8 14.8 19.8 0
H 8 19.8 27.8 19.8 27.8 0
I 1 27.8 28.8 27.8 28.8 0
J 0.8 27.8 28.6 29.6 30.4 1.8
K 0.7 27.8 28.5 28.1 28.8 0.3
L 1.5 28.8 30.3 28.8 30.3 0
M 0.4 30.3 30.7 30.4 30.8 0.1
N 0.1 30.3 30.4 30.3 30.4 0
O 0.5 30.4 30.9 30.4 30.9 0
P 0.1 30.7 30.8 30.8 30.9 0.1
Q 1 30.9 31.9 30.9 31.9 0
R 0.5 31.9 32.4 31.9 32.4 0
S 0.2 32.4 32.6 32.4 32.6 0

Submitted to Prof. Debjit Roy in partial fulfilment of “Organizational Management 1” course at IIM Ahmedabad by study group A4 in Aug 2019