An integer programming based algorithm for the resource constrained project scheduling problem

Abstract

In this thesis, we study the problem of scheduling the activities of a single project in order for all resource and precedence relationships constraints to be satisfied with an objective of minimizing the project completion time. To solve this problem, we propose an Integer Programming based approximation algorithm, which has two phases. In the first phase of the algorithm, a subproblem generation technique and enumerative cuts used to tighten the formulation of the problem are presented. If an optimal solution is not found within a predetermined time limit, we continue with the second phase that uses the cuts and the lower bound obtained in the first phase. In order to evaluate the efficiency of our algorithm, we used the benchmark instances in the literature and compared the results with the best known solutions available for these instances. Finally, the computational results are reported and discussed.