A multi-mode critical chain scheduling method based on priority rules

Abstract

Although considerable research effort has been directed at the development of the critical chain method (CCM), the existing research is based on the assumption that each project activity is performed with only one execution mode, and thus, its decision-making ability and application scopes are limited. This article aims to evaluate the performances of the priority rules for the critical chain project scheduling problem with multiple execution modes. Firstly, a multi-mode critical chain project scheduling problem (MCCPSP) is formulated, in which precedence relationships, resource constraints, multiple modes and the characteristics of the CCM are all considered. Subsequently, the heuristic solution of MCCPSP is designed, and the priority rules used in resource-constrained project scheduling problems are built into the heuristic of MCCPSP. Finally, a large number of existing priority rules are evaluated on the PSPLIB data sets by computation experiments. The computational results show that the activity priority rule GRD and mode priority rule least total resource usage have the performances for MCCPSP.