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

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  • Xuejun Hu
  • Nanfang Cui
  • Erik Demeulemeester

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Xuejun Hu & Nanfang Cui & Erik Demeulemeester, 2015. "Effective expediting to improve project due date and cost performance through buffer management," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(5), pages 1460-1471, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:53:y:2015:i:5:p:1460-1471
    DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2014.948972
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    Cited by:

    1. Chen, Bo & Hall, Nicholas G., 2021. "Incentive schemes for resolving Parkinson’s Law in project management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 288(2), pages 666-681.
    2. Cui, Nanfang & Demeulemeester, Erik & Bie, Li, 2016. "Incorporation of activity sensitivity measures into buffer management to manage project schedule riskAuthor-Name: Hu, Xuejun," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(2), pages 717-727.
    3. Yangyang Liang & Nanfang Cui & Tian Wang & Erik Demeulemeester, 2019. "Robust resource-constrained max-NPV project scheduling with stochastic activity duration," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 41(1), pages 219-254, March.
    4. Zhai, Yue & Zhong, Ray Y. & Huang, George Q., 2018. "Buffer space hedging and coordination in prefabricated construction supply chain management," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 192-206.
    5. She, Bingling & Chen, Bo & Hall, Nicholas G., 2021. "Buffer sizing in critical chain project management by network decomposition," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    6. Xuejun Hu & Erik Demeulemeester & Nanfang Cui & Jianjiang Wang & Wendi Tian, 2017. "Improved critical chain buffer management framework considering resource costs and schedule stability," Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 159-183, June.
    7. Wenhui Zhao & Nicholas G. Hall & Zhixin Liu, 2020. "Project Evaluation and Selection with Task Failures," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(2), pages 428-446, February.
    8. Antonio J. Conejo & Nicholas G. Hall & Daniel Zhuoyu Long & Runhao Zhang, 2021. "Robust Capacity Planning for Project Management," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 33(4), pages 1533-1550, October.

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