Case Study 2 Decotile, a French company, produces and markets a variety of tiles made of wood, ceramic, marble and

granite. Decotile has a high quality production facility at fie quarries located in a Central Asian country. The company exports slabs of granite of different sizes and shapes to Europe, Asia and USA. In the late 90s, Decotiles' granite product sales increased dramatically and the company found it impossible to cater to the demand from its existing five quarries. In Jan 99, Decotile decided to set up a project to expand its granite production capacity at the existing quarries. Experts recommended a three-fold capacity expansion of the quarries to cater to the market demand. The quarries are located in a remote area, inhabited by a nomadic tribe facing extinction. They are surrounded by meadows on which the tribal's cattle graze. Each of the five sites had open-air quarries, a waste dump where the stone chips and used stones are dumped, an office building, a maintenance yard for storing machinery and other raw materials, and housing quarters for hundred and forty employees. Granite was extracted from the quarries, using machinery or manual labor and was shifted to a processing plant where the final cutting, shaping and polishing would be done. The proposed project required Decotile to acquire 50 acres of surrounding land. As the quarries are about 80-100 kms. away from any major town, management will have to hire and relocate labour to work at these sites. Due to the adverse conditions prevailing in that area, the company has to source everything from nearby towns to provide basic amenities to its employees. Finally after 6 months, it got the permission to expand the quarries. On 13th July 1999, Decotile formally announced the start of the project to the local press. The project soon ran into trouble. An NGO filed a suit against it, alleging that the proposed project would be a serious threat to the environment and the tribe whose numbers are already dwindling. There was also protests from human rights activists objecting to the company's exploitation of local labor. Environmentalists feared that the pollution caused by this project would disturb the ecosystem. The project faced the threat of termination even before it started. The issue came up at the company's board meeting. Many directors felt that the company should terminate the project but Henry Emmanuel, an executive director opposed this and said "since this project is key to the company's growth, every attempt is to be made to salvage the project. After a long discussion, the board decided to send Jomy (project manager) to the site to handle the situation on the spot. The management asked Jomy to report to Henry who would act as the project sponsor. Questions for Review 1. Identify the stakeholders and how they affect the project. 2. How can Jomy salvage the project ? 3. What is the role of Henry and how can he help Jomy to tackle the situation ?

Case Study 3 Fresh Foods, an international food processing company established in the 1990, has packaging facilities in 16 countries across the world. The company processes and markets canned vegetable, fish, poultry and meat products. The company has had a growth rate of @ 14% for the past ten yrs. During the last four years, the company spent much of its retained earnings on projects aimed at automating its operations in order to increase productivity without increasing labor. In the last 4 years, starting from 1996, Fresh Foods built 3 plants every year. In 1999, the company adopted a project management approach for managing its construction projects using a matrix structure. The company also established a planning group for planning the project before assigning it to the project managers. But project managers were reluctant to accept the assignments given by the planning group unless they were allowed to re-plan the project. The planning group criticized the project managers' demand for re-planning since it would lead to duplication of efforts. Within a year, the management of the company found that the matrix structure was not effective for managing the projects. Almost every project ended up with cost overruns and schedule creeps. To add to their problems, conflicts between the line managers and project managers were on the rise. The line managers did not allocate resources as required by the project managers. The project managers were also not happy with the executives of the company because they delayed in giving approvals and even changed project deadlines without consulting the concerned project manager. The management also found that lack of commitment on the part of project managers and conflicts among line managers, planning group and project managers disabled the matrix structure adopted for managing the company's construction projects. Consequently, management planned various corrective measures for handling the situation. Questions for Review 1. Are the demands of the project managers for re-planning justified ? 2. What are the factors responsible for the downfall of the matrix structure ? 3. What corrective measures can the management take to handle the situation ?

Case Study 4 Setwell Construction company is located near San Francisco, and has been in the area of construction for over 25 years. The company employs experienced, talented and ambitious staff and empower them to have a proactive approach to its clients' needs. Several world class buildings were constructed by the company, however, during the '80s, the revenues dropped by 30 % due to declining commercial construction activities in the home country. In March '90, Daniel Cooper, a post graduate in civil engineering from Stanford University, became the managing director of the company. His first job was to increase the company's revenues. Daniel wanted to shift the company's focus from commercial constructions to public projects like dams, bridges etc. He felt such a strategy would help the company in getting contracts from governments across the world. In line with this strategy, the company took up a dam construction project for the first time in Australia, in June '90. Under Daniel's guidance, the project was successfully completed by 1995. With this success, the company bagged several dam construction projects from different countries. Employees of the company were overburdened as more and more projects kept coming in. It became difficult for the management to look after all the projects. Also, project experts had a tough time roaming around the globe whenever problems occurred. In spite of this, Daniel kept encouraging all his staff to execute the projects on schedule. Although the company was well equipped with machinery required to execute the projects, it purchase some more to complete the projects on time. Several problems arose, and the project work was disturbed because of delays caused by transporting the required machinery from one place to another. By '98, the situation turned adverse. All projects undertaken by the company got delayed. Profits from each of the projects shrank. This was due to time overruns and other miscellaneous costs incurred by the company in purchasing the machinery and shipping them from project to project. Complaints regarding quality of construction started trickling in. But, Daniel kept accepting whatever new projects that came along. While reviewing the company's performance during 1995-2000, Daniel realized that the net profit of the company increased only marginally, compared to 1990-95. This was in spite of the company completing more than twice the number of projects it did during 1990-95. Daniel attributed the failure to lack of coordination between the projects that were being executed in several countries. He approached Richards, a reputed consultant to prepare a plan. Richards suggested that a good strategy map would solve most of the problems. Questions for Review 1. What in your opinion went wrong with the company's operations leading it to earn only marginal incremental profits ? 2. How will a strategy map help in choosing the right projects ?