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Title of the Paper: The Diagrammatic and Mathematical Approach of Project Time-cost Tradeoffs

Abstract

A potential project management involving time used of a project can always be tradeoff by additional resources input. Such a tradeoff may come from different options of the activity of the project which can be choice. The situation of “Pay more - Save Time” is common for project management related decision problems. The available technology of shortening the duration of each activity is often the sources of the time-cost tradeoffs problem. And the problem solving processes always rely upon the techniques of critical path method (CPM) calculation and mathematic programming, for example linear programming, or integer programming etc. The paper includes an introduction to the concepts of CPM method, time-cost tradeoff, and the uses of mathematical programming in spreadsheet. The diagrammatic expression of critical path method and mathematical method will be combined in this paper, by which a more clear and efficient exposition of solving the time-cost tradeoffs problem will be exhibited. As a more efficient tool, the paper discusses such new education pedagogy.

Introduction

Prompted by the present emphasis on time-based competition in industry, there are more and more issues focus on the problem of time-cost tradeoffs. A potential project management involving time used of a project can always be tradeoff by additional resources input. Such a tradeoff may come from different options of the activity on the critical path of the project. The situation of “Pay more - Save Time” is common for project management related decision problems. The available technology of shortening the duration of each activity is often the sources of the time-cost tradeoffs problem. And the problem solving processes always rely upon the techniques of critical path method (CPM) calculation and mathematic programming, for example linear programming, or integer programming etc.

Methods of critical path method that are frequently used include Early-Start, Early-Finish, Late-Start, Late-Finish calculation of each activity. Further, one can use forward method and backward method to find the zero float time activity, and define the critical path of the project. The project total duration and its respective total project cost needed thus can be obtained. After advanced evaluation, if an activity on the critical path can be shortened by more resources input, one can obtain the other project time and its respective cost. We can use the same way to calculate each possible combination of project time/cost one by one, and finally obtain a project’s time-cost tradeoffs curve. But now including the mathematical programming will be more efficient for the problem.

Using mathematical method to solve the time-cost trade-off problem has been studied extensively in the project management literature. Mathematical approaches convert CPM

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Hsu, K. (2008, June), The Diagrammatic And Mathematical Approach Of Project Time Cost Tradeoffs Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--3962