Determination of critical chain project buffer based on information flow interactions

Abstract

It has been well accepted in the literature that co-dependency between project activity durations is caused by resource tightness and network complexity. However, we show that information flow interaction between activities is the key factor for it. Based on whether there exist spliced relationships between activities, we introduce the concept of rework safety time. We propose a method to compute the rework safety time using the information output and input time factors, rework probability matrix, and rework impact matrix. We achieve the optimization of the critical chain sequencing via the design structure matrix so that the dependency between activities is reduced. The project buffer is then determined by the tail concentration method based on the optimized chain. The empirical results show that, as opposed to the traditional RSEM method, our approach improves the project buffer consumption rate, shortens project duration, reduces project cost, and increases project on-time completion rate.

Keywords:

• critical chain
• project buffer
• design structure matrix
• sequential optimization
• rework safety time

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71572010) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No.FRF-BR-15-012B).