Project Baseline Scheduling: An overview of past experiences
Keywords:
project management, dynamic scheduling, baseline scheduleAbstract
Dynamic project scheduling is a term used to refer to the dynamic nature of project management. It consists of three dimensions, known as baseline scheduling, schedule risk analysis and project control (Uyttewaal, 2005; Vanhoucke, 2012b). In previous studies, it has been shown that both the schedule risk analysis and project control should go hand in hand as useful tools to measure the project performance of a project in progress and to improve the project control process and the corrective action decision making process in case the project is in danger.
In an article in the International Journal of Project Management (Vanhoucke, 2012a), the project control dimension was highlighted based on a comparison between academic results obtained on fictitious project data and additional tests performed on a set of real-life data from 8 Belgian companies from various sectors. However, little or nothing has been said about the first dimension of dynamic scheduling: the construction of a project baseline schedule. In the current article, a similar approach to the previously published article will be followed. Based on the extensive knowledge of the algorithmic developments in the academic literature and on the past experience of using some of these (adapted) algorithms in a practical environment, it will be illustrated how and why research can contribute positively to practice when constructing a project baseline schedule. In doing so, we believe that the gap between academic results and practical relevance is bridged, gradually moving the dynamic project scheduling discipline to a higher level.
References
Agin, N. (1966). Optimum seeking with branch and bound. Management Science, 13:176–185.
Balachandran, B. and Zoltners, A. (1981). An interactive audit-staff scheduling decision support system. The Accounting Review, 56:801–812.
Ballest´ın, F., Valls, V., and Quintanilla, S. (2006). Due dates and RCPSP. In Jozefowska, J. and Weglarz, J., editors, Perspectives in Modern Project Scheduling, volume 92 of International Series in Operations Research and Management Science, chapter 4, pages 79–104. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Birbil, S. and Fang, S.-C. (2003). An electromagnetism-like mechanism for global optimization. Journal of Global Optimization, 25:263–282.
Brucker, P., Drexl, A., Mohring, R., Neumann, K., and Pesch, E. (1999). Resource- constrained project scheduling: notation, classification, models, and methods. European Journal of Operational Research, 112:3–41.
Brucker, P. and Schumacher, D. (1999). A new tabu search procedure for an audit-scheduling problem. Journal of Scheduling, 2(4):157–173.
Chan, K. and Dodin, B. (1986). A decision support system for audit-staff scheduling with precedence constraints and due dates. The Accounting Review, 61:726–734.
Demeulemeester, E. (1995). Minimizing resource availability costs in time-limited project networks. Management Science, 41:1590–1598.
Demeulemeester, E. and Herroelen, W. (2002). Project scheduling: A research handbook.
Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Dodin, B. and Chan, H. (1991). Application of production scheduling methods to external and internal audit scheduling. European Journal of Operational Research, 52:267–279.
Dodin, B. and Elimam, A. (1997). Audit scheduling with overlapping activities and sequence-dependent setup costs. European Journal of Operational Research, 97:22–33.
Dodin, B., Elimam, A., and Rolland, E. (1998). Tabu search in audit scheduling. European
Journal of Operational Research, 106:373–392.
Drexl, A., Frahm, J., and Salewski, F. (2006). Audit-staff scheduling by column generation. In Morlock, M., Schwindt, C., Trautmann, N., and Zimmermann, J., editors, Perspectives on Operations Research. Gabler Edition Wissenschaft.
Drexl, A. and Kimms, A. (2001). Optimization guided lower and upper bounds for the resource investment problem. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 52:340–351.
El-Rayes, K. and Moselhi, O. (1998). Resource-driven scheduling of repetitive activities.
Construction Management and economics, 16:433–446.
Elmaghraby, S. (1995). Activity nets: A guided tour through some recent developments.
European Journal of Operational Research, 82:383–408.
Harris, R. and Ioannou, P. (1998). Scheduling projects with repeating activities. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 124:269–278.
Hartmann, S. and Briskorn, D. (2010). A survey of variants and extensions of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. European Journal of Operational Research, 207:1–15.
Herroelen, W., De Reyck, B., and Demeulemeester, E. (1998). Resource-constrained project scheduling: A survey of recent developments. Computers & Operations Research, 25:279–302.
Herroelen, W., Demeulemeester, E., and De Reyck, B. (1999). A classification scheme for project scheduling problems. In Weglarz, J., editor, Project Scheduling - Recent Models, Algorithms and Applications, pages 1–26. Dortrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Herroelen, W., Van Dommelen, P., and Demeulemeester, E. (1997). Project network models with discounted cash flows a guided tour through recent developments. European Journal of Operational Research, 100:97–121.
Holland, J. (1975). Adaptation in natural and artificial systems. University of Michigan
Press, Ann Arbor.
Hsu, C.-C. and Kim, D. (2005). A new heuristic for the multi-mode resource investment problem. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 56:406–413.
Icmeli, O. and Erengu¨¸c, S. (1994). A tabu search procedure for the resource constrained project scheduling problem with discounted cash flows. Computers & Operations Research, 21:841–853.
Icmeli, O. and Erengu¨c¸, S. (1996). A branch-and-bound procedure for the resource- constrained project scheduling problem with discounted cash flows. Management Science, 42:1395–1408.
Icmeli, O., Erengu¨¸c, S., and Zappe, C. (1993). Project scheduling problems: A survey. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 13:80–91.
Kolisch, R. and Hartmann, S. (2006). Experimental investigation of heuristics for resource- constrained project scheduling: An update. European Journal of Operational Research, 174:23–37.
Marti, R., Laguna, M., and Glover, F. (2006). Principles of Scatter Search. European Journal of Operational Research, 169:359–372.
Mika, M., Waligora, G., and Weglarz, J. (2005). Simulated annealing and tabu search for multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling with positive discounted cash flows and different payment models. European Journal of Operational Research, 164:639–668.
Neumann, K. and Zimmermann, J. (1999). Resource levelling for projects with schedule- dependent time windows. European Journal of Operational Research, 117:591–605.
Neumann, K. and Zimmermann, J. (2000). Procedures for resource leveling and net present value problems in project scheduling with general temporal and resource constraints. European Journal of Operational Research, 127:425–443.
O¨zdamar, L. and Ulusoy, G. (1995). A survey on the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. IIE Transactions, 27:574–586.
Salewski, F., Schirmer, A., and Drexl, A. (1997). Project scheduling under resource and mode identity constraints: Model, complexith, methods and application. European Journal of Operational Research, 102:88–110.
Schwindt, C. (2000). Operations research proceedings 1999: selected papers of the Symposium on Operations Research (SOR ’99), Magdeburg, September 1-3, 1999, chapter Minimizing earliness-tardiness costs of resource-constrained projects, pages 402–408. Springer.
Shadrokh, S. and Kianfar, F. (2007). A genetic algorithm for resource investment project scheduling problem, tardiness permitted with penalty. European Journal of Operational Research, 181:86–101.
Uyttewaal, E. (2005). Dynamic Scheduling With Microsoft Office Project 2003: The book by and for professionals. Co-published with International Institute for Learning, Inc.
Van Peteghem, V. and Vanhoucke, M. (2010). A genetic algorithm for the preemptive and non-preemptive multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem. European Journal of Operational Research, 201:409–418.
Van Peteghem, V. and Vanhoucke, M. (2011). Using resource scarceness characteristics to solve the multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem. Journal of Heuristics, 13:77–93.
Van Peteghem, V. and Vanhoucke, M. (2013). An artificial immune system algorithm for the resource availability cost problem. Flexible Services and Manufacturing, 25:122–144.
Vanhoucke, M. (2006a). Scheduling an R&D project with quality-dependent time slots.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3982:621–630.
Vanhoucke, M. (2006b). Work continuity constraints in project scheduling. Journal of
Construction Engineering and Management, 132:14–25.
Vanhoucke, M. (2007). Work continuity optimization for the Westerscheldetunnel project in the Netherlands. Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management, 52:435–449.
Vanhoucke, M. (2009). A genetic algorithm for net present value maximization for resource constrained projects. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5482:13–24.
Vanhoucke, M. (2010). A scatter search heuristic for maximising the net present value of a resouce-constrained project with fixed activity cash flow. International Journal of Production Research, 48:1983–2001.
Vanhoucke, M. (2012a). Measuring the efficiency of project control using fictitious and empirical project data. International Journal of Project Management, 30:252–263.
Vanhoucke, M. (2012b). Project Management with Dynamic Scheduling: Baseline Scheduling, Risk Analysis and Project Control, volume XVIII. Springer.
Vanhoucke, M. and Demeulemeester, E. (2003). The application of project scheduling techniques in a real-life environment. Project Management Journal, 34:30–42.
Vanhoucke, M., Demeulemeester, E., and Herroelen, W. (2001a). An exact procedure for the resource-constrained weighted earliness-tardiness project scheduling problem. Annals of Operations Research, 102:179–196.
Vanhoucke, M., Demeulemeester, E., and Herroelen, W. (2001b). Maximizing the net present value of a project with linear time-dependent cash flows. International Journal of Production Research, 39:3159–3181.
Yamashita, D., Armentano, V., and Laguna, M. (2006). Scatter search for project scheduling with resource availability cost. European Journal of Operational Research, 169:623–637.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Mario Vanhoucke
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.