Management Review ›› 2025, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (5): 243-250.

• Operations Management • Previous Articles    

Critical Chain Project Buffer Sizing Based on Multi-level Resource Conflict

Zhang Junguang, Zhang Xu   

  1. School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083
  • Received:2023-02-13 Published:2025-06-18

Abstract: In order to avoid the project delay caused by the shortage of resources, a method of dynamically adjusting the project buffer according to the use of resources is proposed. This method considers the horizontal and vertical impacts of resource conflicts between multilevel links to determine the size of project buffer, determines the vertical impacts of resource conflicts according to link hierarchy span and arrangement, and predicts the horizontal impacts of resource conflicts by combining resource attributes with Markov chain. The simulation results show that this method can effectively reduce the risk of project delay caused by resource conflict, and combine with the prediction method to optimize the buffer amount dynamically to improve the stability and adaptability of project buffer.

Key words: project management, critical chain, buffer determination, resource conflict, Markov chain