Critical Chain Project Management or Drum Buffer Rope Production?

I think you have only scratched the surface of Critical Chain. Scratching is good!

Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is based on the Theory of Constraints (TOC).

TOC was designed first for production with a management method called Drum Buffer Rope (DBR).

These two methods are fundamentally the same, but have different approaches. Both production management and project management apply to resources, tasks, dependencies and deliverables.

I was a manufacturing engineer with Boeing in Seattle for 14 years. Building an airplane could be managed as a project or production. They are one of the world’s top users of TOC. Building an electrical power unit could be considered production or a project.  Beer cans would be production.

To me, the difference is in how you want to pay attention to it, manage it. If it’s valuable, important or time critical, manage it as a project so you know how it’s doing all the time. If it’s repetitive, high volume, or time flexible, manage it as production. Between the two is a huge grey area and choice.

http://ccpmconsulting.com/category/operations/ and http://ccpmconsulting.com/category/project-management/

Production usually has significant queue time between operations. Projects have far less slack between tasks, and none along the Critical Chain/Critical Path. CCPM and DBR both focus attention on the system constraint. The theory is that every system has something that limits it, a constraint. There is usually only one. Find it, help it, and get immediate and significant improvement in output. It is easy to use and decisions become obvious. It’s worth a good look.