Optimal Resource-Constraint Project Scheduling with Overlapping Modes

Overlapping activities is widely used to accelerate project execution. Overlapping consist in executing in parallel two sequential activities by allowing a downstream activity to start before the end of an upstream activity based on preliminary information. In companies, overlapping is examined in resource constraints scheduling without considering interaction between activities and rework caused by alteration of information exchanged until finalized information is available at the completion of the upstream activity. By contrast, the literature deals with overlapping of couple of activities without considering a whole project with resource constraints. We here investigate the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with different feasible modes of overlapping including associated rework. We formulate the optimization problem as an integer linear programming problem. An example of a 30 activity project is provided to illustrate the utility and efficiency of this model. An optimal solution is reached within reasonable computation time. Our results also highlight the closed interaction between resource constraints and overlapping modes and confirms the relevance of jointly consider them.

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