I know that this site is mainly construction industry oriented. However, I believe there are a few people involved in manufaturing projects who might find this ineresting. And under any circumstances, it has great significance for scheduling in general.
I was very excited a couple of days ago when a Google search turned up a brand new paper on the MIT website about using the critical path drag metric to analyze and optimize a manufacturing process. In my consultant’s role, I have in the past used drag analysis in manufacturing -- but although there are now organizations using it for projects, I’ve never known anyone else to use it for a manufacturing process.
The author Blake Sedore discovered the metric and the process on the web. Then he used it to analyze and optimize the process at a manufacturing plant and wrote his Master’s thesis on the results. He explores precisely how he analyzed the drag and then made recommendations to reduce the cycle time.
This is so exciting because it means that, after almost two decades of trying to get this technique into general use, it’s finally happening! And at the premier engineering university in North America!
You can find my blog on the topic, along with the link to Mr. Sedore’s paper, here [1]:
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan