Operations Management: Sustainability and Supply Chain Management, Twelfth Edition
by Jay Heizer, Barry Render, Chuck Munson
Variability in Activity Times
In identifying all earliest and latest times so far, and the associated critical path(s), we have adopted the CPM approach of assuming that all activity times are known and fixed constants. That is, there is no variability in activity times. However, in practice, it is likely that activity completion times vary depending on various factors.
For example, building internal components (activity A) for Milwaukee Paper Manufacturing is estimated to finish in 2 weeks. Clearly, supply-chain issues such as late arrival of materials, absence of key personnel, and so on could delay this activity. Suppose activity A actually ends up taking 3 weeks. Because A is on the critical path, the entire project will now be delayed by ...
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