关键词: 关键链, 项目管理, 鼓缓冲, 能力约束缓冲, 缓冲大小

Abstract: To solve the various uncertainty problems in multi-project management, a new method to determine the capacity constraints buffer size was proposed in critical chain multi-project scheduling. The network characteristics of drum activities and difference between drum activities and activities on the feeding chain were discussed. Effects of drum resource tightness, drum network complexity and drum space interval were considered and integrated in this method. A simulation experiment was carried out to demonstrate application of the proposed method. Comparison of the proposed method with the cut and paste method and the approach without incorporating drum space interval were performed. The result showed that the suggested method generated smaller buffer size while providing the sufficient staggered time and almost the same on-time completion rate of the whole projects. Thus, the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed method were validated.

Key words: critical chain, project management, drum buffer, capacity constraint buffer, buffer size