A. Shtub et R. Etgar, A BRANCH-AND-BOUND ALGORITHM FOR SCHEDULING PROJECTS TO MAXIMIZE NET PRESENT VALUE - THE CASE OF TIME-DEPENDENT, CONTINGENT CASH FLOWS, International Journal of Production Research, 35(12), 1997, pp. 3367-3378
The problem of scheduling activities in a project to maximize its net
present value (NPV) has been solved recently for the case where net ca
sh flow magnitudes are dependent on the time of realization. In this p
roblem, incentive payments and penalties for early and late event occu
rrences respectively, as well as the cost of resources over time, are
time dependent. We present a branch and bound solution approach for th
is problem. We compare the NPVs of the solutions obtained from the bra
nch and bound algorithm with those of a simulated annealing approach d
eveloped earlier. Our computational results show that the branch and b
ound approach outperforms the best known simulated annealing implement
ation.