Application of Critical Path Method & Project Crashing:

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT OF AUTOMOTIVE ELECTRONIC CONTROL UNITS

Bagares, Alton Enric & Porter, Catherine Anne

I. Background Case II. Objective of the Study

This study aims:
LEAR Corporation is an American company 1.) To meet the completion date for the
that provides custom electronic control units product development phase
and product design services. They offer turnkey 2.) To come up with a project schedule
embedded systems and addresses the entire that minimizes the cost of crashing the
product life cycle from design to manufacturing. project.

The automotive industry is under constant

III. Theoretical Background
pressure to reduce time in implementing new
This study requires the application of Critical
innovations while still meeting customer
Path Method and Project Crashing to evaluate
expectations. ABC Corporation, A Chinese
the earliest and latest time can start and finish,
Company and Lear's customer, needs an ECU
calculate slack, define critical activities,
to upgrade its existing function. ECU is a
evaluate the impact of crashing on cost over
computer system in automotive electronics that
project duration before and after crashing.
controls one or more electrical systems or
subsystems in a vehicle. To reduce the time to
Critical Path Method (CPM) has been used to
market the new features, the customer requires
help in programming and monitoring the
to speed up the entire development process 30
progress of the activities involved in the project
days earlier than the normal schedule.
within the allowable timeline. They can specify
activities that are crucial to the duration of the
The product development plays a crucial role in
project as well as finding the optimal trade-off
meeting the completion targets since it
between the required time of completion and
comprise 60-80% percent of the product life
the cost.
cycle from Project Kick off until delivery to the
CPM is used to describe project activities
customer.
where the critical path is the longest path of the
project without any float or slack (Heldman,
A normal product development cycle for an
2011).
Automotive ECU module is 8.76 months or
A slack is the term used to describe how long a
~263 days. To meet with the project timeline,
task can be delayed before it impacts the
the manufacturing team commits to crash the
schedule and hence affect the date of
project by 15 days which requires the design
completion. The tasks that lies in the critical
team for the product development phase to
path has zero slack. An activity with zero slack
crash for 15 days. With the customer
can be delayed without affecting the project
requirement, design team is faced with a
completion time. CPM activity times are
challenge on proper planning and project
assumed proportional to the amount of
scheduling strategies to meet the specified
resources allocated and assumes prior
time, minimizing cost whilst meeting the
experience with similar project where data on
performance standards,
the resources needed and activity duration is Table 1. Normal Schedule for ECU Product
available. Development Phase

Project crashing is a project compression

technique in PERT - CPM that are used by Task
ID Activity Name Duration
managers to shorten the duration of the project
1 Program Kick-off 0 days
without changing its scope. Crashing analyzes 2 Customer Design Freeze and Specs Review 5 days
cost and schedule trade-offs to determine how 3 Mech Design Release Package 4 days
to obtain the greatest amount of compression 4 HW Design Release Package 4 days
5 PCB Design Release Package 15 days
for the least incremental cost. Crashing 6 NM Preparation 7 days
analyzes and categorizes activities based on 7 Component Ordering 16 days
the lowest crash cost per unit time. Crashing 8 EPCB Build and Shipment 10 days
only works for critical path activities where it is 9 EPCB PETC MRD 1 day
10 Mechanical Parts Tooling Fabrication 35 days
possible to shorten schedules. The project 11 Mechanical Parts Preparation and Inspection 11 days
crashing results in a high direct cost to the 12 Mechanical Parts Shipment to MFG Plant 5 days
project, but also gives clear identification for 13 Final Assembly Build 7 days
Finished Product Shipment to Engineering for
optimal time cost. In project management, 14
Testing 14 days
direct cost is the basis for crashed cost 15 Finished Product Arrival (Engineering) 1 day
calculation. 16 Pre-DV Mechanical Testing 40 days
17 SW Development for B-Sample 50 days
18 B-Sample SW Release 1 day
IV. Methodology 19 SW Design Package Release 5 days
20 B-Sample Build & Shipment 10 days
The flow of activities, their duration and 21 Design Verification Testing 51 days
corresponding predecessors is taken from the Mechanical Design Iteration Based on Test
22
Work Breakdown Structure of the ECU product Result 10 days
23 Mechanical Design Release Package 5 days
development phase (Table 1). The cost of each Mechanical Parts Tooling Modification and
24
activity is based on 15 USD pay per hour Parts Preparation 73 days
25 Review of DV Results (PCB and HW) 11 days
allotted for each activity on its normal schedule.
26 PCB and HW Design Release Package 5 days
27 PCB Production for C-Sample 18 days
Equation 1 28 C-Sample Build & Shipment 12 days
SW Development & Partial Validation for C-
29
Sample 76 days
30 SW Release for C-Sample 1 day
31 NM Preparation (C-Sample SW) and Release 5 days
Where CN is the Cost for each activity and TN is 32 C-Sample SW Reflash 2 days
the normal time duration for the Activity. Table 33 Product Validation Testing 36 days
1 shows the break down description of the 34 SW Development & Full Validation for SOP 36 days
35 NM Preparation (Final SW) 5 days
activities involved in the product development
36 NM Release (Final SW) 1 day
phase. It starts with Activity 1, the Program 37 Customer SOP 0 days
Kickoff after awarding the project and ends with
Activity 44, the Start of Production (SOP). finish are the starting and finish time of each
activity if there are no delays that occurred. The
The CPM or critical path method is very earliest an activity can finish (Efj) is the earliest
effective in analyzing large projects with time (Esj) plus the duration of activity (tj).
several activities. The earliest time and earliest
Equation 2
If activity i s an immediate predecessor activity
j, then activity j cannot start until activity i
finishes. The earliest time activity j can start is
the maximum of the earliest finish times of its
immediate predecessors.
Equation 3
The earliest start and earliest finish of all
activities can be determined using equations
(1) and (2) in order to calculate for the project
completion time which is the Earliest Start of
the Finish Node:
Equation 4
The calculation of the earliest start and finish
times from equations 1-3 is called the forward
pass, which is the forward chronological order
of activities. The critical path can be
determined by determining the latest start time
(LSj) and latest finish time (LFj) at the same
completion time.
Equation 5
Also assuming the activity j is the immediate
successor if activity i, the latest time that
activity j can finish is the minimum of the latest
start time of all its successors.
Equation 6
Equations 4 and 5 is used to calculate the
latest start times and latest finish times for all
activities with the project completion time as
the latest finish time of the finish node. This is
the backward pass of the CPM. The slack can
then be calculated by the difference between
the latest start time and the earliest start time of
activity j.
Equation 7
The activities with zero slack are critical
activities and makes up the critical path.
(Agyei,W. ,2015). Determining the critical
path is important to see the activities that
can be completed by adding extra
resources.
When the crashing approach is used, any
additional costs associated with crashing the
project are reviewed against the possible
benefits of completing the project within a
shorter span of time. The calculation is based
on minimizing the total cost of crashing of
activities in the critical path which involves
multiple iteration.
In this study, the critical path and crashing
calculations are done using POM-QM, a
software providing mathematical analysis for
operations management, including CPM.
Calculation using the software requires the
data on the crashing cost. Calculation of
Crashing Cost of the product development
phase is based entirely on the overtime pay for
design team for the project. New Cost for
Crashed Activity is calculated as follows:
Equation 8
( ) ( )
Where c is the crashed cost per day and TC is
the minimum duration to crash the project. This
cost takes in to account the 25% additional pay
for overtime work. Crash Cost CC is calculated
by
Equation 9
The crash time is determined by the Project
Coordinator which is the minimum time to finish
the project without compromising output.
V. Results and Discussion
The Critical path method investigates the
critical activities based on the activity times and Table 3. Critical Path Calculation of ECU-Product
the immediate predecessor/s of each activity Development Phase
(Table 2).

Table 2. Activity Time and Predecessors

Using PERT-CPM, Single time estimate

module of POM-QM, the critical path is
determined, which is represented by the red
Table 4. Shows the crash cost as calculated
arrows in the network diagram in Figure 1. The
based on equation 7 and 8 for each activity.
early start, early finish, late start and late finish
Crashing is applied to activities
in days are shown in Table 3. The activities
10,11,12,13,14,16, 22, 23, 24, 28, 33 and 34.
highlighted in red, with zero slack are the
These activities lies on the Critical Path as
critical activities that make up the critical path.
illustrated in Figure 1.
The project duration is 263 days. This is the
longest path, from start to finish, which is also
the minimum time to finish the product
development phase.
 Figure 1. Network Diagram for ECU Product Development Phase

Table 4. Crashing Cost of Selected Activities

Table 5. Period and Cumulative Cost of Crashing

Using POM-QM, Analysis revealed that only 5
activities will be crashed to shorten the entire Table 6. New Schedule for Crashed Project
project by 15 days while minimizing the total
incremental cost per activity crashed. An
additional $ 8394.62 will be spent on overtime
for crashing the following activities:

Activity #24: Mechanical Parts Tooling

Modification and Parts Preparation (6 days
crashed)
Activity #25:Review of Design Verification
Results for PCB and Hardware (5 days
crashed)
Activity # 28:Sample Build and Shipment (5
days crashed)
Activity #33: Product validation testing (4 days
crashed)
Activity #34: Software Development and Full
Validation for SOP (4 days crashed)

It is also worth noting the significant increase in

cost increment from crashing the project from
11 days to 12 days, which could be a factor to
consider for the Project Manager. If the
significant cost difference in crashing will be
covered by benefits of accepting the deadline,
then the management should opt to pursue the
customer’s requirement.

VI. Conclusion
This study has addressed the problem on
crashing the project of the product
development phase by 15 days to meet the
customer’s requirement for completion with an
additional incurred cost of $8394.62. The
teams involved in the activities crashed will
then work overtime to meet the deadline.
Table 6 shows the new schedule of the
crashed project from 263 days to 248 days.
References

1. Heldman, K. (2011). PMP Study

Guide. (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ:
Wiley Publishing.
2. Agyei,W. (2015) Project Planning
And Scheduling Using PERT And
CPM Techniques With Linear
Programming: Case Study,
International Journal Of Scientific &
Technology Research Volume 4,
Issue 08, pp 222-227
3. Taha, AH (2007) , Operations
Research: An Introduction. Pearson
Education Inc. and Dorling
Kindersley Publishing Inc. 8th Ed,
pp 295-313