Apparel Online Bangladesh Magazine May Issue 2019 | Page 53

are suggested by the buyer, and
the other with more number
of in-between micro activities
(in-house activities) to exercise
control over macro activities. To
decide upon which all activities
should be there in TNA calendar,
one must prepare either PERT
network or Gantt chart mandatorily
and the resultant critical path
should be the activity chain
for TNA calendar, all activities
falling in critical path are critical
activities. Critical activities
should always be on focus, a single
minute delay in any of the critical
activities may lead to final shipment
delay. In case some of the buyer-
suggested milestone activities
are part of the critical activities,
then well and good; other non-
critical activities will have slag
time anyway.
Critical activities in any TNA
remain unchanged throughout
order execution process
WRONG
Generally TNA is prepared as
proposed plan of execution. The
planned duration and sequence of
activities decide the critical path.
However, during actual execution of
order, duration of any activity may
stretch beyond planned duration,
which may change the critical
path. If duration of any non-critical
activity extends beyond the slag
time, then that particular activity
may become critical and critical
path will change accordingly. This
phenomenon happens frequently
during order execution and
therefore specialised software is
necessary for tracking TNA which
automatically and dynamically
changes the critical path during
order execution process.
Manpower resource dependency
is not so important in preparing
critical path or TNA
WRONG
It is a common practice to estimate
the duration of activities in days or
hours rather than in ‘man-days’ or
‘man-hours’. In the given four task
example assignments, both B and
C can work concurrently as per
dependencies concerned. However,
if same manpower is to be used
for both B and C, the dependency
relation will change accordingly
and B and C will become sequential
processes.
Linear activity sequence
In a typical scenario, one order may
have 40-50 activities to be tracked/
followed up/managed (from order
receipt to delivery) by 5/6 people,
which obviously means one resource
person is responsible for more than
one activity. Therefore, resource
dependency is very important in
TNA.
Different orders should be
followed up using separate
TNA
Parallel activity sequence as PERT network
WRONG
It is a common practice to have
one merchandiser responsible
for multiple orders. Prevalent
practice is to prepare separate
TNA for different orders and
track in isolation. Since resource
utilisation for more than one
order is not synchronised, and
since it is calculated separately,
situations will arise when same
resource is expected to work
on more than one place, which
is impossible. Therefore, when
common resource is to be used
for multiple tasks, it is logical
to combine all TNAs into one
integrated to avoid confusion of
priorities.
Spreadsheet software
is enough to manage TNA
WRONG
It was found that majority of the
organisations use spreadsheet (e.g.,
MS Excel) to schedule activities
against target date, which they
call TNA or critical path. With full
potential of spreadsheet being
used, all requirements of TNA
still cannot be managed. Firstly,
existing use of spreadsheet is
merely typing activities and dates
in tabular form. Hardly anyone
uses formula, macros or conditional
formatting of spreadsheet to
calculate variations and get alarms.
Therefore, the purpose of using
spreadsheet is virtually defeated.
Secondly, spreadsheet cannot
To decide
upon which all
activities should
be there in TNA
calendar, one
must prepare
either PERT
network or Gantt
chart mandatorily
and the resultant
critical path
should be the
activity chain for
TNA calendar,
all activities
falling in critical
path are critical
activities. Critical
activities should
always be on
focus, a single
minute delay
in any of the
critical activities
may lead to final
shipment delay.
generate automatic Gantt chart
or calculate critical path and
many other requirements that
are necessary for managing
TNA. Spreadsheet when used
cleverly can generate linear
calendar dates, calculate
variance between planned and
actual completion date and raise
visual alarms.
Specialised softwares
are required to manage
TNA
RIGHT
Managing TNA requires
automatic Gantt chart
preparation, automatic critical
path preparation, automatic
resource utilisation calculation,
automatic integration of
more than two Gantt charts
with resource constraints
automatically reflected, different
options of task relationships
like start-start, finish-finish, as
well should be able to change all
synchronised activities during
any change of plan during
progress of the order. Further,
the software should help or
guide the user with several
visual/colourful benchmarks
and alarm systems. Generally
specialised project management
software is capable of providing
maximum of these features, thus
ideal for managing TNA.
www.apparelresources.com | MAY 2019 | Apparel Online Bangladesh
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