Designing a control mechanism using earned value analysis: an application to production environment

Abstract

Earned value analysis is a project performance method which simultaneously presents both cost and schedule performances. The purpose of this paper is to model the uncertainty associated with activity duration in earned value analysis. The approach incorporates to design a control mechanism, which would be applicable through production control as well as project management problems. The job processing times have been considered as triangular fuzzy number. Costs are assumed to be directly related to fuzzy activity time, which are estimated through a bottom up hierarchy process. Consequently, different earned value metrics have been achieved. Research findings provide an efficient control mechanism in earned value analysis, which would be highly applicable in production control area. This research also yields a novel approach for representing a production performance index during implementation of production processes. In addition to the above mentioned issues, forecasting features can be further performed for predicting completion time of products for delivery to the customer. The approach presented in this paper has been successfully implemented through a multi-period–multi-product production planning problems, which efficiently demonstrates the applicability of the proposed control mechanism.