Effective expediting to improve project due date and cost performance through buffer management

Abstract

The rapidly changing marketplace together with the increasing complexity of contemporary projects makes it more likely that project activities will have uncertain durations, incurring a generally low probability of on-time delivery. Thus, project control that aims to track the project performance and to expedite relevant activities when necessary has become the main aspect within the scope of project management in order to ensure a successful scheduling outcome. The Critical Chain Scheduling and Buffer Management (CC/BM) has shown to provide a popular approach to build robust project schedules and to offer a valuable control tool for coping with schedule variability. However, the most current buffer management (BM) practice faces a problem of neglecting the cost information when taking expediting actions. In view of this defect, we introduce a new control procedure on the basis of CC/BM that evaluates the probability of successful project completion relative to the cost of crashing and that determines when to expedite which activities in a cost-effective manner. Results of an experimental application of the proposed method present its relative dominance over the currently widely adopted BM approach with respect to project time and cost performance.

Supply chain integration strategies in fast evolving industries

“…Aggregated buffers can be implemented through buffering inventory, time and capacity (Stratton and Warburton, 2003). Inventory buffering can be used in manufacturing and retail industries where physical goods are traded, ( Jammernegg and Reiner, 2007), while time buffering can be employed in the service industries (Umble and Umble, 2006;Stratton and Knight, 2010) and within project-based activities (Hu et al, 2014;Kuo et al, 2009;Barber et al, 1999). Capacity buffering (reserving excess capacity) can be implemented in cases where uncertainty and variation in market and supply are significant and forecast systems are inherently undependable, and where, therefore, inventory buffering is not a viable solution (Hill et al, 2012).…”

A New Buffer Monitoring Approach Based on Earned Value Management Concepts

“…In this approach, three regions with static action threshold were proposed, in [11] author questioned Goldratt's static monitoring notion, and he recommended the two buffer trigger lines to vary linearly over the planned duration of the project considering the fact that the uncertainty might decrease as the project progresses. This approach is known to RBMA and has been described comprehensively and accurately in [7]. We choose this approach as the representative method to show the mechanism of buffer monitoring system.…”

“…In this approach, again, three region of decision zones were considered but supposed that the two action threshold of buffer are linearly allocated during the project. In [7], author put forward a new CC/BM-based schedule monitoring procedure that evaluates the probability of successful project completion relative to the cost of crashing and that determines when to expedite which activity in a cost-effective manner. in [8] author incorporated the activity sensitivity measure into the buffer monitoring process, enabling the management team to estimate the risk of project delays on the whole and to identify high-risk activities in particular when taking expediting actions.…”

The Application of Critical Chain Concept in Elena Project Guidance

“…Author in [11] questioned Goldratt's static monitoring notion, and he recommends the two buffer trigger lines to vary linearly over the planned duration of the project considering the fact that the uncertainty might decrease as the project progresses. In [8], author put forward a new CC/BM-based schedule monitoring procedure that evaluates the probability of successful project completion relative to the cost of crashing and that determines when to expedite which activity in a cost-effective manner. An in [9] author incorporated the activity sensitivity measure into the buffer monitoring process, enabling the management team to estimate the risk of project delays on the whole and to identify high-risk activities in particular when taking expediting actions.…”

“…The main challenge of a project planning and executing is a wide range of constraints such as resource scarcity, network complexity and various uncertainties. ( [7] and [8]). Traditional project schedule management methods, namely a critical path method (CPM) and program evaluation and review technique (PERT), can no longer meet the project management modern needs, so improving a new mechanism to meet such needs, is useful.…”