Integrating materials management with project management of complex projects
Abstract
Purpose
This work aims at integrating materials management with project management in the context of manufacturing of complex products which require a variety of items. To achieve this, we propose two prioritization measures of items: material criticality (MC) at activity level and overall criticality (OC) at project level by incorporating project network characteristic through activity criticality (AC) values.
Design/methodology/approach
The costs or penalties which determine criticality of items are hidden in nature and are difficult to measure and model mathematically. Hence, Fuzzy Inference System (FIS), which captures experts’ tacit knowledge in the form of linguistic If‐Then rules has been used.
Findings
OC obtained can be used as a measure to prioritize items for procurement aligned with on‐site build strategy and as a surrogate measure of shortage cost coefficient for inventory models. The analyses of output to observe the effect of AC on OC values of items, clearly demonstrate the novelty and importance of incorporating project network characteristics in materials management decision making.
Originality/value
In this work, we are able to leverage managerial tacit knowledge derived through years of experience and convert it into a readily usable quantitative parameter OC for prioritization of items to be procured. For identifying the input parameters for OC, we brought in the new perspective of including project network characteristics to align materials and project management.
Keywords
Citation
Dixit, V., Srivastava, R.K. and Chaudhuri, A. (2013), "Integrating materials management with project management of complex projects", Journal of Advances in Management Research, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 230-278. https://doi.org/10.1108/JAMR-05-2013-0031
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited