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1 KEY TERMSSELF-REVIEW EXERCISESPROBLEMSREFERENCESCHAPTER Typical Project: The Global Oil Credit Card critical path Meeting the Board s in Activity Mid- Chapter Summary: and Time-Cost Cost Management: Management Using Microsoft Project on : PERT task of managing major projects is an ancient and honorable art. In about 2600 ,the Egyptians built the Great Pyramid for King Khufu. The Greek historian Herodotusclaimed that 400,000 men worked for 20 years to build this structure. Although these fig-ures are now in doubt, there is no question about the enormity of the project.

2 The Book ofGenesis reports that the Tower of Babel was not completed because God made it impossi-ble for the builders to communicate. This project is especially important, since it establishesa historical precedent for the ever-popular practice of citing divine intervention as a ratio-nale for projects ranging from building a suburban shopping center to putting a manon the moon are amazingly large, complex, and costly. Completing such projects on timeCD14-2 C D CHAPTERSAs host for the 1992 summer Olympic games, the city ofBarcelona was faced with an extremely complex logisticalproblem: scheduling more than 2,000 events in a 15-dayperiod.

3 The problem was not only very large but included agreat many different types of constraints, some of them notordinarily encountered in the scheduling of more were the precedence relationships for example,qualifying rounds obviously had to take place before quarter-finals, semifinals, and finals. Then, there was the need tospread out the events, in both time and space. One concernwas to avoid traffic jams that might result if two or more pop-ular events were scheduled in nearby facilities at the sametime.

4 But even when different venues were involved, it wasdesirable to schedule the most attractive events at differenttimes, to allow the largest possible audience for the greatestnumber of events. The requirements of live TV coverage ofdifferent events for different time zones also had to be consid-ered. For instance, interest in soccer matches would be high inEurope, Africa, and South America, but not in North , there were constraints on the available equipment(such as TV cameras) and personnel (for example, security).

5 This complex problem provided an interesting challengefor two professors at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya inBarcelona. It soon became evident that no single existing pro-gram was adequate for the task. They therefore developed a col-lection of interactive algorithms to supplement the more con-ventional project management software, along with a set ofgraphical aids to help compare different schedule was found useful first to create a calendar (assigningcompetitions to days), and then to refine the precise timetableof events on each day.

6 This approach allowed rough schedulesto be generated quickly. It also proved useful to work withtime divisions both larger and smaller than an event. The modelers discovered that each sport had its ownrhythm and that it helped to think in terms of blocksof days that fit that rhythm. A particular sport, forexample, might be best served by scheduling threeconsecutive days of preliminary competition, a day off,and then the finals. Equally helpful was the concept of a unit a part ofan event having intrinsic interest as a spectacle.

7 Thusthe end of the marathon, for example, was treated as a objective function for the scheduling process incor-porated several criteria, each of which was evaluated on anumerical scale. Among these were continuity (the number ofdays between the first and last activity for a particular event)and temporal profile (a measure of how well the schedule dis-tributed the activities throughout the two-week period, com-pared to an ideal distribution).The TV scheduling problem could be formulated as abinary integer programming model, but solving it would haverequired an impractical amount of computer time.

8 Instead, asimpler greedy algorithm, designed for the situation, proveduseful in developing timetables tailored to the needs of spe-cific key feature of the resulting system, called SUCCESS92,is its speed and flexibility. In the event of weather problems, analternative schedule can be quickly devised. SUCCESS92 hasbeen received with great enthusiasm by the organizers of thegames. (See Andreu and Corominas.)APPLICATION CAPSULEWhen Is the Synchronized Swimming, por favor? Management ScienceGoes to the Barcelona Olympics1 The Chicago Tribune(August 5, 1977) noted the following comment concerning the blackout in New Yorkin July of that year: Con Ed called the disaster an act of God.

9 And within the budget is not an easy task. In particular, we shall see that the complicatedproblems of scheduling such projects are often structured by the interdependence of activ-ities. Typically, certain of the activities may not be initiated before others have been com-pleted. In dealing with projects possibly involving thousands of such dependency relations,it is no wonder that managers seek effective methods of analysis. Some of the key questionsto be answered in this Chapter is the expected project completion date?

10 Is the potential variability in this date? are the scheduled start and completion dates for each specific activity? activities are criticalin the sense that they must be completed exactly as sched-uled in order to meet the target for overall project completion? long can noncriticalactivities be delayed before a delay in the overall completiondate is incurred? might resources be concentrated most effectively on activities in order to speedup project completion? controls can be exercised on the flows of expenditures for the various activitiesthroughout the duration of the project in order that the overall budget can beadhered to?