Patent ID: 7117161

Claim:
A method of controlling a process having activities to achieve desired goals, to method comprising the steps of: providing a computer for coordinating the method steps; mapping the activities, with each activity having a scheduling component and an operational component, based on their time scheduling relative to each other, wherein an activity map will organize activities based on the relative importance or the scheduling component versus the operational component for each activity and the relative importance of scheduling/operation is selected from the group consisting of: 80–100%/0–20%; 65–80%/20–35%; 50%/50%; 20–35%/65–80% and 0–20%/80–100%; determining at least one scheduling driver, that which affects the start and duration of an activity, of the activities; measuring the metrics of the at least one scheduling driver; determining at least one operations driver, that which affects the work done by an activity, of the activities; measuring the metrics of the at least one operations driver; evaluating driver metric data accounting for the relative effects of the at least one scheduling driver and the at least one operations driver on the process to determine which attributes of the drivers and which drivers create a predictive equation for the response of the process; and controlling the process by using the evaluation of the driver metrics as feedback for controlling the currently selected drivers and to predict and select new drivers, if new drivers can affect the scheduling and performance greater than the currently selected drivers, such that the desired goals of the process are achieved.