Approaches to project scheduling under resource constraints are discussed in this book. After an overview of different models, it deals with exact and heuristic scheduling algorithms. The focus is on the development of new algorithms. Computational experiments demonstrate the efficiency of the new heuristics. Finally, it is shown how the models and methods discussed here can be applied to projects in research and development as well as market research.
This title presents a large variety of models and algorithms dedicated to the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP), which aims at scheduling at minimal duration a set of activities subject to precedence constraints and limited resource availabilities. In the first part, the standard variant of RCPSP is presented and analyzed as a combinatorial optimization problem. Constraint programming and integer linear programming formulations are given. Relaxations based on these formulations and also on related scheduling problems are presented. Exact methods and heuristics are surveyed. Computational experiments, aiming at providing an empirical insight on the difficulty of the problem, are provided. The second part of the book focuses on several other variants of the RCPSP and on their solution methods. Each variant takes account of real-life characteristics which are not considered in the standard version, such as possible interruptions of activities, production and consumption of resources, cost-based approaches and uncertainty considerations. The last part presents industrial case studies where the RCPSP plays a central part. Applications are presented in various domains such as assembly shop and rolling ingots production scheduling, project management in information technology companies and instruction scheduling for VLIW processor architectures.
Approaches to project scheduling under resource constraints are discussed in this book. After an overview of different models, it deals with exact and heuristic scheduling algorithms. The focus is on the development of new algorithms. Computational experiments demonstrate the efficiency of the new heuristics. Finally, it is shown how the models and methods discussed here can be applied to projects in research and development as well as market research.
A survey of the state of the art of deterministic resource-constrained project scheduling with time windows. General temporal constraints and several different types of limited resources are considered. A large variety of time-based, financial, and resource-based objectives - important in practice - are studied. A thorough structural analysis of the feasible region of project scheduling problems and a classification and detailed investigation of objective functions are performed, which can be exploited for developing efficient exact and heuristic solution methods. New interesting applications of project scheduling to production and operations management as well as investment projects are discussed in the second edition.
Project scheduling problems are, generally speaking, the problems of allocating scarce resources over time to perform a given set of activities. The resources are nothing other than the arbitrary means which activities complete for. Also the activities can have a variety of interpretations. Thus, project scheduling problems appear in a large spectrum of real-world situations, and, in consequence, they have been intensively studied for almost fourty years. Almost a decade has passed since the multi-author monograph: R. Slowinski, 1. W~glarz (eds. ), Advances in Project Scheduling, Elsevier, 1989, summarizing the state-of-the-art across project scheduling problems, was published. Since then, considerable progress has been made in all directions of modelling and finding solutions to these problems. Thus, the proposal by Professor Frederick S. Hillier to edit a handbook which reports on the recent advances in the field came at an exceptionally good time and motivated me to accept the challenge. Fortunately, almost all leading experts in the field have accepted my invitation and presented their completely new advances often combined with expository surveys. Thanks to them, the handbook stands a good chance of becoming a key reference point on the current state-of-the-art in project scheduling, as well as on new directions in the area. The contents are divided into four parts. The first one, dealing with classical models -exact algorithms, is preceded by a proposition of the classification scheme for scheduling problems.
This multi-author volume, containing contributions from international experts in the field, presents recent developments in project scheduling for both theory and practice. It is organized in three parts: I. Basic deterministic models; II. Special deterministic models; III. Stochastic models. A variety of approaches is presented dealing with multiple-category resource constraints, different mathematical models of activities, and various project performance measures in single and multiobjective formulation. Exact and heuristic algorithms are presented for both deterministic and stochastic project description.The volume will be of special interest to scientists, students, decision makers, executive managers, consultants and practitioners involved in systems management or operations research, in particular in business, engineering, and finance, but also in other areas of pure and applied sciences.
A survey of the state of the art of deterministic resource-constrained project scheduling with time windows. General temporal constraints and several different types of limited resources are considered. A large variety of time-based, financial, and resource-based objectives - important in practice - are studied. A thorough structural analysis of the feasible region of project scheduling problems and a classification and detailed investigation of objective functions are performed, which can be exploited for developing efficient exact and heuristic solution methods. New interesting applications of project scheduling to production and operations management as well as investment projects are discussed in the second edition.
Project management can be broadly defined as the process of managing, allocating and timing resources to achieve given objectives in an efficient and expedient manner. The objectives of the book cover three areas: classification; procedures; and problems.
Robust Project Scheduling is to review the fundamentals of robust project scheduling through the deployment of proactive/reactive project scheduling procedures.
The topic of this book is known as dynamic scheduling, and is used to refer to three dimensions of project management and scheduling: the construction of a baseline schedule and the analysis of a project schedule’s risk as preparation of the project control phase during project progress. This dynamic scheduling point of view implicitly assumes that the usability of a project’s baseline schedule is rather limited and only acts as a point of reference in the project life cycle. Consequently, a project schedule should especially be considered as nothing more than a predictive model that can be used for resource efficiency calculations, time and cost risk analyses, project tracking and performance measurement, and so on. In this book, the three dimensions of dynamic scheduling are highlighted in detail and are based on and inspired by a combination of academic research studies at Ghent University (www.ugent.be), in-company trainings at Vlerick Business School (www.vlerick.com) and consultancy projects at OR-AS (www.or-as.be). First, the construction of a project baseline schedule is a central theme throughout the various chapters of the book, and is discussed from a complexity point of view with and without the presence of project resources. Second, the creation of an awareness of the weak parts in a baseline schedule is discussed at the end of the two baseline scheduling parts as schedule risk analysis techniques that can be applied on top of the baseline schedule. Third, the baseline schedule and its risk analyses can be used as guidelines during the project control step where actual deviations can be corrected within the margins of the project’s time and cost reserves. The second edition of this book has seen corrections, additions and amendments in detail throughout the book. Moreover Chapter 15 on "Dynamic Scheduling with ProTrack" has been completely rewritten and extended with a section on "ProTrack as a research tool".
