An integrated survey of deterministic project scheduling

There have been many survey papers in the area of project scheduling in rec ent years. These papers have primarily emphasized modeling and algorithmic contributions for specific classes of project scheduling problems, such as net present value (NPV) maximization and makespan minimization, with and wi thout resource constraints. Paralleling these developments has been the res earch in the area of project scheduling decision support, with its emphasis on data sets, data generation methods, and so on, that are essential to be nchmark, evaluate, and compare the new models, algorithms and heuristic tec hniques. These investigations have extended the frontiers of research and a pplication in all areas of project scheduling and management. In this paper , we survey the vast literature in this area with a perspective that integr ates models, data, and optimal and heuristic algorithms, for the major clas ses of project scheduling problems. We also include recent surveys that hav e compared commercial project scheduling systems. Finally, we present an ov erview of web-based decision support systems and discuss the potential of t his technology in enabling and facilitating researchers and practitioners i n identifying new areas of inquiry and application. (C) 2001 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd. All rights reserved.