A HEURISTIC FOR NETWORK PROJECT SCHEDULING WITH RANDOM ACTIVITY DURATIONS DEPENDING ON THE RESOURCE-ALLOCATION

This paper presents a heuristic for resource-constrained network proje ct scheduling. A PERT-type project, where activities require resources of various types with variable capacities,is considered. Each activit y is of random duration depending on the resource amounts assigned to that activity. The problem is to minimize the expected project duratio n by determining for each activity its starting time and the assigned resource capacities. The resource project scheduling model is an NP-co mplete knapsack resource reallocation problem. To obtain a precise sol ution, a lookover algorithm has been developed. For the case when a lo okover requires much computational time, an approximate heuristic algo rithm is suggested. The problem has to be solved at each decision poin t, when at least more than one activities are ready to be operated but the available amount of resources is limited. The heuristic model is illustrated by a numerical example. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.