Planning to avoid Critical Mass
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James,
Where you have independent activities, then the flexibility that exists is only dependent upon the number of different orders-of-execution. ie. if you have three activities,A,B,C, then there are 6 different orders-of-execution.
The only way to acquire more efficient orders-of-execution is by planning each activity at a deeper-and-deeper level of detail. This will then raise any resource conflicts, thus defining the shortest critical path. Essentially, youll be "line-balancing", such that no activity will have any float. This is how manufacturing companies make themselves more efficient - by removing "dead time" wherever possible.
I dont know of any particular texts that deal with this sort of thing, but good scheduling software should enable you to get a pretty good answer. If your resources are finite, then that makes life a lot easier. Once again, however, you will need to programme at a very deep level of detail.
We had a good example of such an exercise; whereby there was a dynamic handling system that went through a specific series of activities, with various paths that crossed. The objective was to determine the maximum number of systems that could be used before a process "clash" ocurred. We programmed the activities down to the last second. It transpired that we could only run two sets of handling elements concurrently. If we used a third, then a clash would occur after a set time. Ok, only using two sets of elements gave us a "less efficient" process, but the advantage was that you didnt have to spend the capital cost and also didnt have to worry about a clash.
HTH
James.