Introduction

Project-based management has long been the business style associated with the construction industry, United States (US) defense contractors, large consulting firms, and even Hollywood. Today, project management is spreading to all sectors of work. Accordingly, the membership in the Project Management Institute (PMI R), a professional organization for the project management specialist, quadrupled between 1993 and 1997. PMI membership is growing by some 1,200 members per month and is expected to break the 100,000-member mark by 2002. Clearly, the trend indicates that there will be an increase in the importance and role that projects and their successful management contribute to the strategic direction of the firm. David Cleland, an established project management scholar, has declared that this is the "Age of Project Management" (Cleland 1990).

At the same time that project management methods have become common practice, the pressures associated with global competition, increased customer focus, shortened manufacturing lead-times, and corporate downsizing have created many new challenges for traditional project management. Among these challenges are the issues of sharing resources and prioritizing those resources across a portfolio of concurrently implemented projects. Resolving the conflicts that arise during this resource sharing and prioritization is what really converts the project network into a project schedule.

Historically, the project management literature has made very little connection between the management of manufacturing activities necessary to create a variety of finished...