Extension of some project scheduling heuristics and their comparison at low and high levels of resource requirement

Mohammad Nematullah, Ryerson University

Date of Award

2005

Degree Type

Thesis Project

Degree Name

Master of Engineering (MEng)

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Saeed Zolfaghari

Abstract

Some of the most frequently used scheduling heuristics for resource constrained projects are Activity Time (ACTIM), Activity Resource (ACTRES) and Resource Over Time (ROT) which are based on Brook's Algorithm (BAG). These heuristics assign resources based upon the priority values of the activities that can be scheduled. In the first part of this study, these heuristics have been modified such that when more than two activities are allowed to be assigned, depending upon the priority rule, that activity is assigned first overriding the priority rule,

which, if assigned, will result in minimum resource idle time (MRIT). MRIT is found to improve the performance of these existing heuristics. The second part of the study investigates the performance of these heuristics at high and low levels of resource requirement by each activity. ACTIM was found to perform better than other heuristics at the low level. At the high level, all the heuristics performed equally well.