Kellogg Cereal Company

Kellogg Cereal Company

Kellogg Cereal Company is the world’s leading cereal producer, with headquarters in Battle Creek. Its products are manufactured in over fifteen countries and sold in over one hundred and eighty countries throughout the world. This implies Kellogg must manage its initiatives effectively in order to meet client needs.

Project Failures

Given the high number of project failures, one would think Kellogg would be content if its initiatives were completed with some degree of success. The assumption is that the project will be completed sooner, cheaper, and better. To ensure that a project is completed on time, within budget, and of high quality, the organization should apply the correct mix of planning, monitoring, and control. Project K

Efficient Project Management

Kellogg has to manage its projects efficiently to meet customer demands.

High Rate of Project Failures

Given the high rate of project failures, one might think that Kellogg would be happy to have its projects finish with some degrees of success. The expectation is that the project is to be completed faster, cheaply and better, the company should employ the right mix of planning, monitoring, and control to ensure a project is completed on time, budget and is of high quality.

Project K

Kellogg has set Project K as its four-year efficiency and effectiveness program aimed at creating new and improving capabilities in various parts of the company. The plan is also designed to create the supply chain of the future and a global business services structure. Kellogg acknowledges that Project K is a significantly sized project expected to generate around $475 million of annual cost saving by 2018. This will provide the company the opportunity to make a significant investment in the venture while improving margins (“Business Summary”, 2017)The company has also unveiled it 2020 Growth Plan. For a project to be successful, an entity must plan the work by utilizing a project definition document. In this regard, Kellogg has set out Project K that has a set of objectives, scope and approach used to achieve its 2018 plan

Management of Project K

Management of Project K requires review of performance, Kellogg reports that there was growth in sales of the company in 2015 in line with the 2020 Growth Plan. The company has also indicated that there has been remarkable progress executing Project K in the year 2015. The review further suggests that the program is designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the company. After creating the work plan, the company had to assign resources and estimates of the work to be done. Redefining the activities of the project has the period gets closer is proving useful to the company.

Activities in Project Management

The management of the plan includes a series of activities such as outlining the resources to be used to manage the project. The company must define project management procedure upfront, indicate the work plan and monitoring the schedule and the budget. The Corporation has executed Project K, discipline and rigor are required to ensure that project management skills are utilized correctly and proactively. A review conducted by the company was intended to determine how the project has been progressing regarding budget and schedule. Updating the work plan should be indicated to show the work completed and the pending part to resolve whether the project will be finalized within the set time and budget.

Role of Scope in Project Control

The purpose of conducting the review is to look for warning signs such as variance in schedule or budget. Quality control steps should be utilized, where the situation occurs the company raises visibility through risk management and design a plan to ensure the project stays on track proactively. Managing the scope is an important activity that is required to control a project, this is because project failure is in most instances cause by the project team working on the major deliverables that were not part of the business requirements.

References

Business Summary. (2017). Investor.kelloggs.com. Retrieved 5 April 2017, from http://investor.kelloggs.com/business-summary#project-k

Kerzner, H. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Turner, J. R. (2014). The handbook of project-based management (Vol. 92). New York, NY: McGraw-hill.