Applying Fuzzy Control Chart in Earned Value Analysis: A New Application

As it is common in project management context, Earned value analysis usually integrates time and cost performance within the project scope. It helps the project manager to understand how to deal with project from two points of view. The first is to recognize current performance indexes and the second one is to provide a forecast to the future. However, most of decisions in this regard have taken based on Schedule Performance Index (SPI) and Cost Performance Index (CPI) while there is no a well organized control mechanism in which detect their situations as it is, not only numerically but also recognize/categorize current situation of the earned value management system linguistically. In this paper a fuzzy control chart approach associated with α-cut is presented in order to control earned value performance indexes including linguistics terms. Also a new application, based on a Multi Period-Multi Product (MPMP) production control problem is illustrated and successfully implemented. Key word: Earned value analysis • fuzzy control chart • linguistic term • production control problem