Optimal resource allocation in activity networks - stochastic environment

Salah E. Elmaghraby and Girish Ramachandra

International Journal of Project Organisation and Management, 2014, vol. 6, issue 1/2, 67-95

Abstract: We treat the problem of optimally allocating a single resource under uncertainty to minimise the sum of resource cost and tardiness cost. We assume that the work content of an activity is the source of the 'internal' uncertainty - as opposed to the 'external' uncertainty. When the work content is known only in probability, we discuss the approach via stochastic programming and demonstrate its inadequacy. We treat the special case when the work content is exponentially distributed. This results in a continuous-time Markov chain with a single absorbing state. We establish convexity of the cost function and develop a policy iteration-like approach that achieves the optimum in finite number of steps. In case of arbitrary probability distribution of the work content, we develop a simulation-based optimisation method that incorporates sampling optimisation and variance reduction techniques.

Keywords: activity networks; resource allocation; stochastic work content; phase-type distributions; uncertainty; simulation; sampling optimisation; variance reduction; continuous-time Markov chain. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=59745 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijpoma:v:6:y:2014:i:1/2:p:67-95

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Project Organisation and Management from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().