W6_YN_Location of Spot Market Team

W6_YN_Location of Spot Market Team

Opportunity Statement

Currently, the spot market team has only three employees. As the project progress, the team is expected to gradually grow as more responsibilities fall on it. The team is currently located at the same office as all the other teams of OPWP, which is the fifth floor of Muscat Grand Mall. However, the size of the office is limited and will reach its full capacity soon. Therefore, it is critical to plan for where to locate the team as it keeps growing.
In this post, we will compare between different options of where to locate the spot market team and the company as a whole.

Feasible Alternatives

Three alternatives on how to deal with the growth of the company and where to locate the spot market team and other OPWP teams are examined:

Option 1) Relocate the spot market team to another floor of the mall, while keeping the other teams at the fifth floor.

Option 2) Relocate the spot market team to an office outside the mall, while keeping the other teams at the Mall.

Option 3) Relocate the whole company to a bigger office somewhere else, keeping all teams together.

Outcomes of Feasible Alternatives

The alternatives will be compared using the compensatory model of the Multi-Attribute Decision Making Technique. The compensatory model includes two techniques; the Non-Dimensional Scaling Technique, and the Additive Weighting Technique. In this model, the relative importance of the attributes is taken into consideration by giving each of them a weight. The naming of the compensatory model comes from the fact that a weakness in an attribute of a product can be compensated by the strength of that product in another attribute in the model.

Acceptable Criteria

Three criteria will be used to compare between the alternatives:

1)      Cost of relocation: the cost of relocating employees and equipment to a new office. Also includes other costs such as costs on employees for potentially relocating their families in case of a new office.

2)      Communication: how easy it is to communicate between members of the company. Communication affects team building, team spirit, knowledge sharing, trust between members, collaboration, and also the time projects take to get done.

3)      Rental Cost: How expensive it is to rent the office space for the entire staff.

4)      Convenience: How convenient the overall process is of expanding the office space occupied by the staff, including the process of moving equipment and documents.

Analysis and Comparison of the Alternatives

Table 1 below details the value of all attributes for each of the alternatives.

Table 1: Data Summary

Attribute	Option 1	Option 2	Option 3
Cost of relocation ($)*	10	30	110
Communication	medium	low	high
Rental Cost ($) *	90	75	65
Convenience	high	medium	low

                        * Those number are multiplied by a factor.

We apply the first technique in the model, which is the non-dimensional scaling technique. In order to do so, the attributes must be converted and measured in a common measurement scale, which in our case is a dimensionless unit with a base of 1. The following two equations can be used, depending on whether the attribute is desirable or undesirable:

·         Desirable:

·        Undesirable:

The results of the technique are summarized in table 2 below:

Table 2: Non-Dimensional Scaling Technique Results

Attribute	Value	Formula	Dimensionless Value
Cost of relocation ($) (undesirable)	10	=(110-10)/(110-10)	1.00
	30	=(110-30)/(110-10)	0.80
	110	=(110-110)/(110-10)	0.00
Communication (Relative Rank) (desirable)	medium (2)	Relative Rank (2-1)/(3-1)	0.50
	low (1)	Relative Rank (1-1)/(3-1)	0.00
	high (3)	Relative Rank (3-1)/(3-1)	1.00
Rental Cost ($) (undesirable)	90	=(90-90)/(90-65)	0.00
	75	=(90-75)/(90-65)	0.60
	65	=(90-65)/(90-65)	1.00
Convenience (Relative Rank) (desirable)	high (3)	Relative Rank (3-1)/(3-1)	1.00
	medium (2)	Relative Rank (2-1)/(3-1)	0.50
	low (1)	Relative Rank (1-1)/(3-1)	0.00

Because of the common scale, the value of all attributes related to each option can be added and then compared, which is shown in table 3 below.

Table 3: Non-Dimensional Scaling Technique Summary

Attribute	Option 1	Option 2	Option 3
Cost of relocation ($)	1.00	0.80	0.00
Communication	0.50	0.00	1.00
Rental Cost ($)	0.00	0.60	1.00
Convenience	1.00	0.50	0.00
Total	2.50	1.90	2.00

According to this technique, option 1 is the most favorable. The non-dimensional technique, however, considers that all attributes are weighted equally, which is not necessarily true. In our case, we value communication more than we value cost of relocation which we, in turn, value more than convenience. To take into account, this technique is complemented by the Additive Weighting Technique. This technique gives more weight to the attributes that are of higher value to the person performing the comparison. The results of this technique is summarized in table 4 below. Note that “B” in the table is the relevant dimensionless value from table 3 above.

Table 4: Additive Weighting Technique Results

Attribute	Relative Rank	Normalized Weight (A)		Option 1		Option 2		Option 3
		Equation	A	B	A*B	B	A*B	B	A*B
Convenience	1	=Relative Rank / ∑Relative Ranks	0.100	1.000	0.100	0.500	0.050	0.000	0.000
Cost of relocation ($)	2		0.200	1.000	0.200	0.800	0.160	0.000	0.000
Rental Cost ($)	3		0.300	0.000	0.000	0.600	0.180	1.000	0.300
Communication	4		0.400	0.500	0.200	0.000	0.000	1.000	0.400
Total	10	-	1.000	-	0.500	-	0.390	-	0.700

As per this technique, option 3 is the most favorable.

Preferred Alternative

According the first technique, option 1 is the most favorable. However, OPWP values communication more than we value cost of relocation and rent. The Additive Weighting Technique allowed me to give more weight to the attributes I value more. Using the second technique which builds upon the results of the non-dimensional scaling technique, it turns out that my true preferred option is option 3. Although moving the whole team outside the mall to a new office is inconvenient and will be costly in terms of relocation, it is more preferable because of the benefits of strong communication between the team. Additionally, offices outside the mall are available for better prices than the mall.

Tracking and Reporting

We shall track the growth of the spot market team and OPWP overall and compare the size of the team to the available space on a consistent basis. Once the office space is about to reach its full capacity, we shall look around for office space options. We will consider the rental cost of the office space in the mall, and look for options outside the mall. Then, we can run the same analysis again before making the choice of moving the team.

References

1)      GUILD OF PROJECT CONTROLS COMPENDIUM and REFERENCE (CaR) | Project Controls - planning, scheduling, cost management and forensic analysis (Planning Planet). (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.planningplanet.com/guild/gpccar/managing-change-the-owners-perspective

2)      Decision Models: Compensatory and Noncompensatory. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.mycbbook.com/MYCBBook-Consumer-Decision-Judgment-Models.pdf

3)      Decision Making Considering Multiattributes. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.csun.edu/~ghe59995/MSE604/MSE604%20Ch.%2014%20-%20Decision%20Making%20Considering%20Multi-attributes.ppt

4)      W3_YN_Compensatory Model in MADM. (2017, November 21). Retrieved from http://pmpopwp.blogspot.com/2017/11/w3yncompensatory-model-in-madm.html