Heuristics for the minimum project-duration problem with minimal and maximal time lags under fixed resource constraints

Abstract

The authors consider the problem of minimizing the duration of a project under fixed resource constraints. For the case that there are only minimal time lags between the start of successive activities and that therefore the project can be described by an acyclic network, a large number of exact and heuristic algorithms can be found in the literature. In this paper, the authors permit both minimal and maximal time lags between activities. The project can then be modelled by an activityon-node network containing cycles. Efficient priority-rule heuristics are presented for solving the resource-constrained project-scheduling problem. Computational results are discussed for projects containing up to 1000 activities and several resources.