Sustainable Project Schedule Management Using Pinch Analysis

Project schedule management involves the proper allocation of resources, such as manpower. Human resource allocation practices generally lack a systematic method that will allow project managers to provide simple and sustainable planning solutions. A new scheduling methodology is proposed in this work, which integrates Pinch Analysis (PA) with critical path method (CPM) given a fixed project duration. The CPM with resource smoothing is the commonly used project management tool that defines the series of critical activities and other activities with slack. Resource smoothing is made when the fluctuation of needed resources does not have large variations with respect to the duration. This scenario gives a practical resource histogram and reduces the risk in project implementation. However, many resource smoothing algorithms use complex calculation and optimization processes that project managers do not easily understand. The hybrid CPM-PA is developed as a practical alternative and solution for this problem. In order to demonstrate the use of CPM-PA, a case study is considered, and the result is then compared with the traditional resource smoothing method. Results show that the new methodology produces results that are comparable to that of the traditional method. It achieved an acceptable Resource Improvement Coefficient (RIC). One of the advantages of the developed CPM-PA method is that it can produce graphical results that will allow project managers to identify bottleneck dates or Pinch Points easily. It is possible in practice to develop automated CPM-PA methods using spreadsheets for use in practical project management