Operations Management: Sustainability and Supply Chain Management, Twelfth Edition

Summary

PERT, CPM, and other scheduling techniques have proven to be valuable tools in controlling large and complex projects. Managers use such techniques to segment projects into discrete activities (work breakdown structures), indentifying specific resources and time requirements for each. With PERT and CPM, managers can understand the status of each activity, including its earliest start, latest start, earliest finish, and latest finish (ES, LS, EF, and LF) times. By controlling the trade-off between ES and LS, managers can identify the activities that have slack and can address resource allocation, perhaps by smoothing resources. Effective project management also allows managers to focus on the activities that are critical to timely project ...