SCHEDULING WITH COEVOLVING RESOURCE AVAILABILITY PROFILES

Existing resource allocation models schedule activities by balancing r esource requirement with resource availability using the resource avai lable profile as a constraint to guide the scheduling process. The giv en resource available profile, however, may not be the best configurat ion for the project. Consequently, the resource available profile may have to be modified to produce improved resource utilization. With eac h modification the activities have to be rescheduled to meet resource availability constraints. A model is presented herein which is able to generate activity schedules that is optimal with respect to the resou rce available profile that is configured interactively with the schedu le for minimum resource idling. The entire project is subdivided into separate resource contracts. The model then employs genetic algorithm (GA) to determine the start times of the activities and simultaneously self-adjust the resource hiring levels and end-dates for each contrac t in order to minimize the objective function. Results show that the m odel can provide schedules and corresponding resource available profil es that yield considerable savings in idle resources even in multi-res ource problems.