The time in a company acquires a vital importance when there are many processes. The time is money invested in the workers, in the service or in the product, but we can spend this money in a profitable way or not. To understand the time of our process, there are three important visual techniques to plan the process: Gantt chart, Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), and Critical Path Method (CPM).
The three techniques mentioned before show the time taken by each component of a process. The Gantt chart is an intuitive method and easy to interpret, but it doesn’t establish the relationship between activities, however, the PERT and the CPM method do it. The CPM and PERT facilitate the critical path and the time which an activity can be lengthened without delaying the process.
These techniques are closely related with the logistics of a company because they are used to plan, to implement, and to coordinate a business. These tools become more important in the process when there are bottlenecks, processes using the same equipment, various processes in the same plant or processes on demand (we need to know when the product will be ready), among others.
If you want to learn more about these tools and how to use them there are more information in the links.
| Gantt chart: | What is a Gantt chart? http://www.gantt.com/
Gantt Chart Template for Excel: http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/excel-gantt-chart.html |
| Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT):
|
What is PERT? http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/PERT-chart
Steps in the PERT planning process: |
| Critical Path Method (CPM):
|
What is CPM? http://hspm.sph.sc.edu/Courses/J716/CPM/CPM.html
Make a CPM (1’ – 5’): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF53ZZsP4ik |
Aurea Jordán Alfonso
The blog of Logistics at MGEPS at UPV 