HEURISTICS FOR SCHEDULING PROJECTS WITH RESOURCE RESTRICTIONS AND SEVERAL RESOURCE-DURATION MODES

The problem addressed in this paper is the non-preemptive resource-con strained project scheduling problem in which the duration of each acti vity depends on the amount of resources allocated to its execution, an d the objective is to minimize the overall project duration. It is als o assumed that resources are limited but renewable from period to peri od. Twenty-one heuristic scheduling rules are compared on 240 test pro blems divided into two main groups containing 50 and 100 activities, r espectively. Each group contains one-resource, two-resource and four-r esource problems. The results of the comparative study allow us to ide ntify the most efficient heuristics and suggest a combination of five- heuristics which have a high probability (229 over 240) of giving the best (among the 21 solutions obtained) solution.