Critical Chain

Richard presents his translation of TOC into project management in class, and Mark, Ruth, and Fred insist that he present his findings directly to the A226 team. Richard breaks down the team’s PERT chart, showing how each step includes 200% safety time added in. Applying the five focusing steps of TOC, the plan is to identify the constraint, which is the critical path, and they exploit it with a more realistic estimate of time by removing the safety from individual steps. The team is furious, but they compromise on cutting the time estimate of each step by half, then adding a buffer of 2 months at the end of the project. Next, they subordinate noncritical paths that feed into the critical path, and they perform the same task, cutting the task in half with half the time for the step and the remaining half as a buffer to protect the critical path. Then, they subordinate resources to the critical path, creating buffers for resources, like people and machines, that are needed in both a noncritical and the critical path. Richard notes that the PERT chart indicates many instances of urgent, emergency tasks, and they work through them, clarifying which tasks are real emergencies to narrow down the division of focus.