Coordinated Planning and Scheduling of Multiple Projects With New Projects Arrival Under Resource Constraint Using Drum Buffer Rope Heuristic

Abstract

Planning and scheduling of multiple projects is significant for efficient utilization of constraint resources. However, in most of the project based companies, planning and scheduling of projects is performed in hierarchical manner with less focus given on coordination between the planning and scheduling levels, which leads to make inefficient plans and cause delays in projects and underutilize the resources. Therefore, current research is focused on coordinated planning and scheduling of multiple projects under resource constraints. Further, arrival of new projects in the planning horizons is also considered during planning and scheduling of multiple projects in planning horizons. Current research proposed drum buffer rope heuristic (DBRH) for coordinated planning and scheduling of multi projects with new projects arrival in rolling horizon. The proposed DBRH integrates higher level planning (HLP) with medium level planning (MLP), identify the critical activities of multiple projects, determine the capacity constraint sharing resources (CCSR) and make efficient plan and schedule of multiple projects with an aim to minimize the total tardiness of multiple projects. Moreover, in each planning horizon, the multiple project activities are updated using push and pull strategies in DBRH to maximize the utilization of CCSR. The performance of the DBRH is measured with the performance of standard genetic algorithm (GA), simulated annealing (SA), GA with priority of maximum tardiness project (GA-MTP) and SA with priority of maximum tardiness project (SA-MTP) based on simple project data, standard benchmark project data and Case Company data. Experimental results indicate that the proposed DBRH gives better results as compared to the other heuristics including GA, SA, GA-MTP and SA-MTP.