Study On New Product R&D Project Time Management Based On The Critical Chain Method

With the rapid changes in market, company should expedite developing more and more complicated products to meet the customers' needs with limited resources and budgets. That is a big challenge for company. LT company, as one of the LED lightings companies which can provide R&D and manufacturing services, in order to meet different customers' demand,the top management of LT company makes a decision that the project team can't allow to increase any extra resources, especially for the human resources when executing the projects, as well as to improve the efficiency in order to ensure the new product to quickly launch into market so as to gain more and more market share. However, currently the supply of a variety of resources especially the human resources is hard to hit the demand in terms of conducting multi-activities in parallel for R&D project. Often multi-activities can't catch the schedule due to the conflict between the resources and demand. As a result, that will make the project delay.On the other hand, the engineers always add the additional time for buffer into the schedule when they are asked for estimating the lead time for each activity so as to secure the activities are finished on time to a great extent. However, it will make the efficiency of the whole project decreased and the project schedule is too long and redundant as well.Above all, the LT company should analyze how to balance the demand and supply for the human resources. And also need to take the resources constrains into account when executing the project activities in order to decrease the conflict when varieties of activities are doing at the same time in the executing phrase. Enhance the accuracy of the estimate for lead time and increase the efficiency for the project executing. Thus to secure varieties of activities in the project are able to be smooth going and finish on time.Critical Chain Project Management Method is the application on the constrain method. Nowadays, Critical Chain Project Management Method has outstanding effects on aspects in terms of resources conflicts handling/resources plan/project process monitoring. The thesis applies Project Time Management theories and Critical Chain Project Management Method to study the topic mentioned above regarding the R&D project time management and puts forward a body of planning method considering the constrains of resources. Firstly, the thesis expounds the relevant theories regarding the project management and project time management and introduces the Critical Chain Project Management Method applying on R&D projects, comparing to the traditional method Critical Path Method for the advantages and disadvantages, to reflect Critical Chain Project Management Method's advantages and applicability. Secondly,the thesis is based on the R&D project solar lawn light R&D project's management as background,analyzes LT company's new product R&D project plan and applies Critical Chain Project Management Method to find the resources constrains during the R&D process and optimizes the sequence for constrain resources so as to find the project's Critical Chain. Thirdly, compress the lead time for activities to reduce the affects of "Student Syndrome" when estimating the lead time. Also, according to the sequence and the feature of the project activities, set the different time buffer, monitor the project progress and warn when abnormal occurs to secure the project on-time rate. Finally,compare and analyze the effects of the traditional project management method and the Critical Chain Project Management Method to validate the effectiveness of applying Critical Chain Project Management Method on project time management.