Critical Chain/Buffer Management

Abstract

Resource-constrained project scheduling is often a complex task due to the presence of dependencies between activities and the limited availability of renewable resources. The previous two chapters gave an extensive overview of different techniques to construct such a schedule, taking various scheduling objectives into account. This chapter extends this resource-constrained scheduling approach to a more flexible baseline schedule in order to be protected against unexpected events. The Critical Chain/Buffer Management approach assumes the construction of a resource feasible schedule as discussed in the previous chapters, but incorporates a certain degree of flexibility in the activity start times in order to easily monitor schedule deviations and quickly respond by taking corrective actions to keep the whole project on schedule.