Application of CCPM in ATE Program Management

This paper describes the use of Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) in program management for the Support Engineering community at IDS in St. Louis. The use of CCPM in Support Engineering initially began in the Mechanical/Electrical group in mid-2003. In late 2006, CCPM was also applied on other programs. The application of CCPM in the Mechanical/Electrical group was to aid in managing the complexity of working multiple programs simultaneously. Based on its success in reducing cost and cycle time, CCPT was applied to ATE projects to manage the complexity of the multiple subsystems being developed within one project. In a CCPM model of a project, the buffers are aggregated from individual task to provide visible safety for the entire task network. There are two main types of buffers; Project Buffers and Feeder Buffers.