Shale Oil Company Case Study: Project Management

Shale Oil Company Case Study: Project Management
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Introduction
Project management is very important in management of a number of complex projects in organization. This case study is about a crude oil manufacturing company that has a number of operating units. These units are essential in pumping crude oil and change it into several hydrocarbon products. The units run 24 hours a day for 7 days a week. However, due to maintenance purposes it needs to be shut down at some point in time for cleaning. However, the use of visual representation workflow such as Gantt charts and PERT charts are vital in determining the tasks that are to be done. This discussion identifies the time and probability in preventive maintenance case study of Shale Oil Company. For this paper, I shall rely on the below PERT network structure for Shale Oil Company.
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Figure  SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 1: PERT Network of Shale Oil Co. & DUI5
Determine the expected shutdown time and the probability that the shutdown can be completed 1 week earlier
Expected shutdown time
The use of PERT tool serves an important role in project management by managers. The PERT chart contains information related to subprojects and the estimated time of completion. Each of the subprojects is given an estimate time that is particularly based on the probability distributions of the expected time of completion from the start time to finish time. The expected shutdown is calculated by the following equation:
Expected time = (Optimistic Time + 4 x Most likely Time + Pessimistic Time) / 6.
The time estimates for the various activities through the network for the project on preventive maintenance of DU5 are as shown below:

Preventive Maintenance of DU5
Time Estimates (in Days)
E...