Aurora-CCPM Multi-Project Critical Chain Project Management
Aurora-CCPM is the world’s most powerful enterprise-level multi-project critical chain project management software available. In addition, Aurora-CCPM is easy to use and is designed to interface with current project management and enterprise applications. Aurora-CCPM is designed to work seamlessly in your environment it can be run from the cloud, hosted on an internal cloud, and run as a standalone application. Aurora-CCPM is a combination of Aurora™, Stottler Henke’s intelligent planning and scheduling system, and the added power and flexibility of Multi-Project Critical Chain Project Management.
By using sophisticated scheduling software as the underpinnings for Critical Chain reasoning, Aurora-CCPM can be applied to projects encompassing thousands of heavily constrained tasks and requiring hundreds of different kinds of resources. Giving the Critical Chain method such a solid scheduling basis also allows it to more easily handle complex situations such as new tasks being inserted during the actual plan execution, as well as other radical changes during execution.
Benefits and Features
By combining CCPM with Aurora’s powerful and sophisticated scheduling technology, Aurora-CCPM provides many benefits:
Critical Chain provides superior
on-time performance. Aurora’s intelligent scheduling provides the shortest Critical Chain
Result: faster throughput.
More flexibility and an improved ability to accommodate change that is, disruptions to the original plan including interjections of new tasks during execution.
Fast scheduling, even though Aurora-CCPM creates the most efficient schedules, they are calculated fast. This also permits many what-ifs can be performed rapidly.
Interfaces with Primavera P6, Microsoft Project, Siemens TeamCenter, Artemis, PSS, Open Plan, PS8, Oracle and other enterprise applications; to import, analyze, and export schedules.
Provides intelligent conflict resolution. Helping users to find options for resolving conflicts faster. Click on conflict reports to be taken directly to conflict in the network.
Aurora-CCPM provides enterprise solutions not otherwise available, including support for any time durations for tasks, minutes, hours, days; and support for large projects and any number of large projects.
One global priority system: everyone understands what is most important to the organization.
Provides explanations on why each activity/task was scheduled where it was, improving transparency and provide more insight in how schedule could be further improved.
Aurora-CCPM drives bottom line results, the increased throughput accelerates profit
What is Critical Chain Project Management?
Aurora-CCPM was developed because the needs of companies involved in the planning and implementation of complex, large-scale manufacturing, turnaround, maintenance, and other operations were not being met by current Critical Chain solutions. Aurora-CCPM has significantly advanced the state-of-the-art in Theory of Constraints (ToC) Critical Chain Project Management by expanding the theory as articulated by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt (Eli) to better handle large (multi-thousand) task projects, in addition to other general capabilities. Many of the enhancements have been published by the premier ToC organization, TOCICO. Aurora-CCPM has significantly advanced the state-of-the-art in CCPM by expanding the theory to better handle large (multi-thousand) task projects, in addition to other general capabilities. For example, the initial theory of Critical Chain promoted as scheduling (backward scheduling) for all applications; this is not always practical or desired. Aurora-CCPM allows for backward scheduling, forward scheduling, or both (mixed-mode) on a task-by-task basis.
CCPM and project management provide greater transparency into how the organization’s overall set of projects are performing during execution, and provides global metrics to guide and motivate all parties to do what is best for the entire organization.
By leveraging Aurora’s sophisticated scheduling system with CCPM theory, a much more robust solution has been developed: Aurora-CCPM. Resource constraints (e.g., available equipment, space, and human resources) are very important to the implementation of the Critical Chain method because it more heavily considers them when compared to Critical Path. Fortunately, Aurora-CCPM takes into account resource requirements, a variety of constraints, and can be adapted to pertinent domain knowledge. This is especially critical during the execution phase of a CCPM plan as real-time updates arrive regarding the status of the hundreds or thousands of tasks that make up the plan.
Aurora-CCPM greatly enhances the practicality and power of the Critical Chain method:
- Critical Chain can now be applied to projects encompassing thousands of tasks
- It can also be used to handle complex emergency-type situations, where new tasks are inserted during the actual execution of the plan
Advantages of Aurora-CCPM
With 20 years of experience in intelligent scheduling and resource management, Stottler Henke’s CCPM software, Aurora-CCPM, is designed to help companies tackle complex situations with ease and carry out operations more efficiently and effectively.
- Ability to handle short-duration tasks, and update buffer reports on any timeframe (e.g., once every hour).
- Ability to handle multi-projects of huge size and complexity (Boeing uses Aurora to run projects that contain over 10,000 activities! The 64-bit version Aurora has run projects with 150,000 but the theoretical maximum is much larger.)
- Buffer reports can be run as frequently as desired even with the largest models.
- Ability to do carry out forward, backward, and mixed mode scheduling.
- Intelligent scheduling that can determine shorter critical chains.
- Ability to leverage knowledge about resource constrained task placement during execution. Due to execution time differences in how tasks are actually executed, the resources may become available for a task that is shown later but actually could be done now (otherwise, these resources would lie idle). Aurora-CCPM could determine in real time that it is best to complete this task now.
- Ability to take variability of tasks in a chain into account in buffer consumption. That is, if a chain consists of a series of low variability tasks at the beginning and then a few high variability tasks at the end of the chain, standard buffer consumption reports could give an overly optimistic view of the situation.
- Sophisticated constraints beyond human capabilities — ability to handle physical space constraints, including taking into account the creation and elimination of the space during the project; as well as concurrent and non-concurrent constraints.
Aurora's Competitive Edge in Software Systems
- Situations where the client already knows the benefits of improved resource scheduling (e.g., aerospace, plant maintenance, refinery turnaround).
- Situations where forward or mixed mode scheduling is required.
- Short-duration situations such as in the medical field.
- Short-duration situations such as in the medical field.
- Situations where the project is beyond the capacity limits of other software.
- Situations where customization to algorithms is needed.
An Introduction to Critical Chain Project Management
Aurora-CCPM was developed because the needs of companies involved in the planning and implementation of complex, large-scale manufacturing, turnaround, maintenance, and other operations were not being met by current Critical Chain software solutions. Aurora-CCPM has significantly advanced the state-of-the-art in Theory of Constraints (ToC) CCPM by expanding the theory as articulated by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt (Eli) to better handle large (multi-thousand) task projects, in addition to other general capabilities. Many of the enhancements have been published by the premier ToC organization, TOCICO. Aurora-CCPM has significantly advanced the state-of-the-art in Critical Chain Project Management by expanding the theory to better handle large (multi-thousand) task projects, in addition to other general capabilities. For example, the initial theory of Critical Chain promoted as scheduling (backward scheduling) for all applications; this is not always practical or desired. Aurora-CCPM allows for backward scheduling, forward scheduling, or both (mixed-mode) on a task-by-task basis.
CCPM provides greater transparency into how the organization’s overall set of projects are performing during execution and provides global metrics to guide and motivate all parties to do what is best for the entire organization.
An Introduction to CCPM is provided in the following Powerpoint presentation.
Boeing's Success with Aurora-CCPM in B787 Dreamliner Assembly
- Aurora-CCPM is being utilized by Boeing in the Final Assembly of the B787 Dreamliner.
- Aurora-CCPM provides Boeing with Critical Chain capabilities not available in other Critical Chain software.
- Aurora-CCPM prioritizes factory production tasks by balancing resource capacities with manufacturing requirements and constraints via the Critical Chain method of buffer management.
- The result is a dynamic assembly schedule that adapts to real-time production variability and allows Boeing to execute the plan as efficiently as possible.
- Video showing production & painting of B787.
Does Aurora-CCPM include integrated project editor and validation?
Aurora-CCPM includes all the power of Aurora’s intelligent project management and scheduling solution, including all Aurora’s project editor and all the project validation and auditing capabilities.
Easy staggering at the constraint with scenarios?
Aurora-CCPM includes multiple options for staggering, ranging from using the concept of the drum resource to letting Aurora’s intelligent resource scheduling maximizing portfolio throughput while pipelining the projects. Aurora-CCPM’s scenario capability makes it seamless and rapid to test various scenarios to determine what works best for specific scenarios.
Easy ETTC feedback and fever status?
Aurora-CCPM provides many easy to understand Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (ETTC) traditional feedback mechanisms including status updates via the fever chart. Since the critical chain method focuses on the critical chain, which is the longest sequence of dependent, resource-constrained tasks that dictate project completion and Aurora is the world’s most powerful solution for maximizing the throughput of the resource-constrained critical path (critical chain), Aurora-CCPM includes many feedback mechanisms (both textual and graphical) unique to Aurora-CCPM.
Prioritized task lists & Taskboards for subtask management?
Aurora-CCPM provides a task-priority list that shows the order in which one should ideally work the tasks. This is updated every time the status is updated during execution. Taskboards (Task Boards) for subtask management are provided via the tabular editor in Aurora-CCPM.
Standard CCPM reports?
Aurora-CCPM provides all the ETTC standard CCPM reports. In addition, Aurora-CCPM provides various additional resources as well as a many types of reports found in Aurora.
Extended analysis for continuous improvement process?
Aurora-CCPM provides extended analyses to support a continuous improvement process. This ranges from tracking resources, which reveals how much of a specific resource is needed over time to providing documentation on constraints and providing documentation on when they are needed, thus ensuring they can be used during the continuous improvement process to verify all constraints are still justified or should be adjusted.
Customizable dashboards and reporting?
Dashboards and reports in Aurora allow for customizations. Style and Filtration options are comprehensive. Filters allow one to specify a subset of elements in which one is interested, while Style allows one to change how different elements are presented.
Does Aurora-CCPM run on PC, Mac and/or Web/SaaS?
Aurora-CCPM is available on versions that run on PCs, and Macs. Aurora-CCPM is also available via the Web.
Integrations?
Aurora-CCPM is designed for easy integration with various external systems. Almost every implementation of Aurora-CCPM includes integration with external systems of reference to pull in various information, such as human resource information, supply chain information, equipment maintenance information, etc. Specifically, Aurora has been interfaced with SAP per at least our Pfizer deployment. Aurora-CCPM can also input and output project data via MS-Project import/export, Primavera P6 import/export, etc. Aurora-CCPM is also integrated with Siemens Xcelerator line of digital twin and digital thread product line.
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