A Constraint Programming Approach to Solve Multi-skill Resource-constrained Project Scheduling Problem with Calendars

Abstract

The multi-skill resource constrained project scheduling is an important and challenging problem in project management. Two key issues that turn this topic into a challenging problem are the assumptions that are considered to approximate the model to a real-world problem and exact solution approach for the model. In this paper, we deal with this two issues. To consider real-word situations, we take into account calendars specifying time intervals during which the resources are available. We proposed a constraint programming approach to solve the problem exactly. The problem with and without resource calendars are modeled with mathematical programming (MP) and constraint programming (CP). In addition, the performance of CP approach is evaluated by comparing Time-Indexed Model (TIM) and Branch and Price (B&P) approaches. Computational results show that the proposed approach can efficiently solve real-size instances.