Project management decisions using fuzzy linear programming

This work presents an interactive fuzzy linear programming (FLP) approach for solving project management (PM) decision problems in a fuzzy environment. The proposed approach attempts to minimize total costs with reference to direct, indirect and penalty costs, durations of activities, specified project completion time and total allocated budget. A numerical example demonstrates the feasibility of applying the proposed FLP approach to actual PM decision problems. Accordingly, the proposed approach yields an efficient solution and determines the overall degree of decision maker (DM) satisfaction. Moreover, the proposed approach offers a systematic framework that facilitates the decision-making process, enabling a DM to interactively modify the range of the results when the environment data are vague until a satisfactory solution is obtained. In particular, several significant characteristics of the proposed FLP approach are elucidated in contrast to those of the main PM decision methods.