Heuristic Methods for Resource Leveling Problems

Symeon E. Christodoulou (), Anastasia Michaelidou-Kamenou () and Georgios Ellinas ()
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Symeon E. Christodoulou: University of Cyprus
Anastasia Michaelidou-Kamenou: University of Cyprus
Georgios Ellinas: University of Cyprus

Chapter Chapter 18 in Handbook on Project Management and Scheduling Vol.1, 2015, pp 389-407 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract A novel resource-leveling algorithm is presented based on entropy concepts, restating the resource-leveling heuristic known as the “Minimum Moment Method”, as an “Entropy Maximization Method” and improving on its efficiency. The proposed resource-leveling algorithm makes use of the general theory of entropy and two of its principal properties (subadditivity and maximality) to restate resource leveling as a process of maximizing the entropy found in a project’s resource histogram. Entropy in this resource-centric problem domain is defined as the ratio of allocated daily resource units over the total number of resource units to complete the project. Entropy’s subadditivity and maximality properties state that if a system consists of two subdomains having n and m components respectively, then the total system entropy is less than or equal to the sum of the subdomains’ entropy, and that the entropy is maximum when all admissible outcomes have equal probabilities of occurrence (maximal uncertainty is reached for the equiprobability distribution of possible outcomes).

Keywords: Entropy maximization method; Heuristic methods; Project scheduling; Resource leveling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-05443-8_18

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