An innovative approach for constrained resource scheduling

The 'ranked positional weight method' (RPWM) is well established in manufac turing for scheduling assembly line work. The idea is to balance the load o n each work station to keep idle time to a minimum. But can it be applied t o construction? Most large projects are scheduled using a critical path met hod (CPM) or similar, in which the project duration is calculated assuming unlimited resources. However, with RPWM it is possible to determine a proje ct duration based on limited provision of resources. This paper compares re sults obtained from RPWM with those from proprietary CPM software. RPWM is found to be much easier to apply than CPM, it requires less computational e ffort and can be used for both constrained and unlimited resource schedulin g.