Near optimal solution for resource-constrained scheduling problems

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Abstract
This paper presents an efficient resource allocation algorithm, and examines its performance against a number of scheduling heuristic rules, aimed at minimizing project durations in a multiple resource-constrained environment. The algorithm has been coded in BASIC and can easily interface with available planning and scheduling software systems. Unlike other heuristic network-based algorithms, resources are allocated simultaneously to sets of activities, rather than to individual activities in a sequential manner. An experiment was conducted to study the performance of the proposed algorithm and compare its results with those generated by four different heuristic scheduling rules, including those found to have the most superior performance such as the widely used least total float rule. Thirty-one network examples adopted from the literature are analysed. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm is superior to the others. The proposed algorithm provides a reasonable trade-off between the best accuracy associated with optimization techniques and the ease of computational effort associated with the simple least total float model. As such, it maximizes the benefits of the two limiting approaches.