WMBA 6620 Week 5 Critical Path Schedule Build Example

A 61-Week Schedule for Line 2: Twenty-Seven Activities Drawn From the Work Breakdown, Typed Dependencies, Three Lags With Reasons, a Critical Path Set by the Oven and Where the Float Sits

Student Name

Walden University

WMBA 6620: Practices in Project Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

A 61-Week Schedule for Line 2: Twenty-Seven Activities Drawn From the Work Breakdown, Typed Dependencies, Three Lags With Reasons, a Critical Path Set by the Oven and Where the Float Sits

Basis of the Schedule

This network schedule sequences the work for Line 2, the bread line being added at the composite Harvest Lane plant on Green Bay's west side. Every activity below is a work package from the work breakdown structure and keeps its number. The four project management packages run throughout and are not scheduled as discrete activities. Durations are in weeks, estimated by each package's owner. Week 0 begins on Monday, November 2, 2026, after the charter is approved. All dependencies are finish-to-start unless a lag is shown, and each lag has a reason given below the table.

Kelley and Walker (1959) introduced the critical path method to find the longest chain of dependent activities, the chain that sets the project's duration, and that is the purpose of the early and late dates computed here.

Activity Table

Table 1

Line 2 Activities, Dependencies, Dates and Float, in Weeks From November 2, 2026

Float is late start minus early start. Week 61 ends on January 3, 2028.

The Three Lags

The 31-week lag between placing purchase orders and the factory acceptance test is the oven vendor's manufacturing time. The vendor quoted 34 weeks from order to delivery, which this schedule splits into 31 weeks of manufacture, one week of factory testing and two weeks of freight.

The 12-week lag before the gas service upgrade is the utility's scheduling queue. The utility cannot begin design until the bakery confirms the oven's gas demand, which comes from final specifications, and it then schedules field crews about three months out.

The 24-week lag before hiring begins is deliberate. Starting recruitment in mid-June 2027 brings new operators on board in late summer, close to installation, so the bakery does not pay a full crew for months before the line exists.

The Critical Path

Procurement, installation, commissioning and handover make up the critical path: 1.4.1, 1.4.2, the manufacturing lag, 1.4.3, 1.4.4, 1.5.1, 1.5.3, 1.5.4, 1.6.1, 1.6.2, 1.8.1 and 1.8.3, a total of 61 weeks. Every week of delay on any of these moves handover. The oven assembly, 1.5.2, and validation, 1.6.3 and 1.6.4, are near-critical with one week of float.

The schedule's shape is clear: the oven's lead time dominates everything. The renovation, with 21 weeks of float, and the utilities, with 22 to 36 weeks, are far from critical, which gives the project room to absorb construction problems but not oven delays. A schedule built on single-point durations treats every estimate as certain, which Herroelen and Leus (2005) flag as its main weakness; here the 34-week oven quote is the number most likely to move.

Comparison With the Charter Milestones

The schedule meets six of the charter's eight milestones with margin; one is missed, and the last, the March 2028 performance target, falls after handover and is measured in production. Equipment arrives in mid-August against an August 31 target. Renovation finishes in March 2027 against a June target; installation finishes in late October against a November target; validation finishes in late December against a January 31, 2028 target; and handover on January 3 leaves six weeks before the February 14 first production date.

One milestone is missed: purchase orders are placed in the week ending December 21, 2026, about a week after the charter's December 15 target. Because ordering is on the critical path, this matters. The project manager will ask the sponsor to accept the revised date, or the team can shorten vendor selection by a week by running the final specification review and vendor negotiation in parallel.

Schedule Risks and Responses

The largest risk is the oven. The team will request monthly manufacturing progress reports from the vendor and negotiate a late-delivery penalty in the purchase order. If the vendor signals a delay, two responses are available: having the installers work extended shifts to shorten 1.5.1 through 1.5.4, or starting operating procedures, 1.8.1, during the trials rather than after them. The second is a fast-tracking move that would shorten the path by up to two weeks at the cost of revising procedures after trials. The PMBOK Guide (Project Management Institute, 2021) describes both crashing and fast-tracking as options for compressing a schedule, each with its own cost or risk.

References

Herroelen, W., & Leus, R. (2005). Project scheduling under uncertainty: Survey and research potentials. European Journal of Operational Research, 165(2), 289-306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2004.04.002

Kelley, J. E., & Walker, M. R. (1959). Critical-path planning and scheduling. In Papers presented at the December 1-3, 1959, eastern joint IRE-AIEE-ACM computer conference (pp. 160-173). https://doi.org/10.1145/1460299.1460318

Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.).