An Application of the Critical Path Method to Job Shop Scheduling—A Case Study

Abstract

Small and medium-sized job shops are often run with little or no production scheduling. As the number and complexity of jobs increases, management finds it increasingly difficult to control costs and still maintain delivery dates. In order to provide management with the needed control, some practical scheduling system is needed. This case study describes the installation, in a medium-sized tool shop, of such a system based on CPM and operated manually. Emphasis is placed on the problems of converting CPM into a continuing, working system under the manual operation of shop scheduling personnel. Much of the value of CPM in the final system is its use as a “one-shot” analytical tool to aid in the production of a shop schedule. An unusual feature of the system is that it provides a method for the routine scheduling of two critical manpower resources in a multiple-network situation. Management Technology, ISSN 0542-4917, was published as a separate journal from 1960 to 1964. In 1965 it was merged into Management Science.