SOLVED

Section 8Â Â Cost-Time Trade-offs and Project Crashing 1) Shortening the project’s duration by deleting unnecessary activities is called “project crashing.” 2) In project management, crashing an activity must consider the impact on all paths in the network. 3) A project manager is interested in crashing a project with variable activity times. Which of the following tools should he/she employ? A) PERT B) CPM C) Gantt Chart D) either PERT or CPM E) PERT, CPM, or a Gantt chart are fine. 4) Which of these statements regarding time-cost tradeoffs in CPM networks is true? A) Crashing is not possible unless there are multiple critical paths. B) Crashing a project often reduces the length of long-duration, but noncritical, activities. C) Activities not on the critical path can never be on the critical path, even after crashing. D) Crashing shortens the project duration by assigning more resources to one or more of the critical tasks. E) The crash time always exceeds the normal time. 5) What was the name of the construction project to rebuild the Pentagon after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001? A) Project Panther B) Project Pit Bull C) Project Python D) Project Piranha E) Project Phoenix 6) Which of the following statements regarding time-cost tradeoffs in CPM networks is false? A) Crashing shortens project duration by assigning more resources to critical tasks. B) Crashing sometimes has the reverse result of lengthening the project duration. C) Crashing must consider the impact of crashing an activity on all paths in the network. D) Activities not on the critical path can become critical after crashing takes place. E) A negative crash cost per period would imply that either crashing is cheaper than not crashing or that the crash time was slower than the normal time. 7) If an activity whose normal duration is 13 days can be shortened to 10 days for an added cost of $1,500, what is the crash cost per period? A) $500 B) $1,500 C) $750 D) $13,000 E) $15,000 8) Two critical path activities are candidates for crashing on a CPM network. Activity details are in the table below. To cut one day from the project’s duration, activity ________ should be crashed first, adding ________ to project cost. Activity Normal Time Normal Cost Crash Time Crash Cost One 8 days $6,000 6 days $6,800 Two 10 days $4,000 9 days $5,000 A) One; $400 B) One; $6,800 C) Two; $1,000 D) Two; $5,000 E) One or Two should be crashed; $1,400 9) If an activity whose normal duration is 15 days can be shortened to 10 days for an added cost of $2,000, what is the crash cost per period? A) $400 B) $2,000 C) $10,000 D) $20,000 E) $30,000 A) is unnecessary. B) is impossible. C) is prohibitively expensive. D) may require crashing multiple tasks simultaneously. E) can be done, but all critical tasks must be reduced in duration.