SCHEDULING OF PROJECTS WITH RESOURCE RESTRICTIONS

Abstract

In modem enterprises, it is very difficult to plan and control the large projects. Many network planning techniques have tried to handle this difficult task. The PERT and CPM techniques are considered the basis of the most successful programme planning/scheduling techniques. These techniques cannot be used in planning or scheduling many real life projects because of the assumption of infinite resources available to complete each activity. In practice, however, project completion requires the use of various resources, whose often limited availability directly influences planning objectives, time estimations, scheduling and progress control. As a result, research efforts commenced to expand upon these techniques to include the allocation of resources. The probable resource constrained project scheduling problems discussed in the literature on individual basis are : 1- Single project — Single resource 2- Single project — Multiple resources 3- Multiple projects — Single resource 4- Multiple projects — Multiple resources The present work is aimed at the development of a universal software for solving all the cases of resource constraint project scheduling problems by simulation. The software schedules the activities of the projects based on the MINSLK, MINLFT and SHORTDUR heuristics. -Project priority which is an important and effective parameter of decision maker is also considered in the software. . The output consists of critical path calculations of the projects, day-to-day planning of activities and graphical display of utilization of resources on each day for all types of problems available in the literature. Numerous problems are tested with the software and it is concluded that MINSLK heuristic gives the best results for single project cases and MINLFT heuristic gives the best results for multi project cases.