Analysis of critical success factors for project planning and setting up a biodiesel factory

Abstract

The objectives of this research are to assess the critical success factors for setting up a biodiesel factory and to develop a project guideline and procedure for the construction of a biodiesel factory. In the determination of critical success factors, the study of the Porter’s Five Forces Analysis, the SWOT Analysis, and the questionnaires were conducted. The result of this study revealed that there are three key success factors for setting a biodiesel factory; raw material, technology, and human resources. These could further be divided into five subsidiary critical success factors of price of raw material, availability of raw material, technology know-how, technology development, and finally the biodiesel specialists. Furthermore, the identified critical success factors; such as raw material and technology, and other additional factors – composing into altogether 5 factors were used to conduct the sensitivity study. The result revealed that the appropriate production capacity for Thailand’s biodiesel factory at the moment is a small production of 10,000 litres per day, in comparison to 100,000 and 200,000 litres per day. Moreover for 10,000 litres per day biodiesel production to be feasible, six criteria of; the difference in price of raw material and biodiesel must be of at least 7 Baht, the amount of raw material that needs to secure must be of a least 255,000 kilograms per month, the biodiesel selling price should be lower than the diesel price of at least 3.70 Baht, the set-up capital must be no more than 26,500,000 Baht, the cost of human resource employ should be no more than 207,000 Baht per month, and the biodiesel produced should be of at least 247,500 litres a month, must be realized. Lastly, for the project planning of this research – a construction of 10,000 litres per day biodiesel factory, the study revealed that to complete this project it required 128 days in total. Also, the project would need altogether 8 project members. In addition, the total project cost has concluded up to 18,455,917 Baht.