A ROBUST OPTIMIZATION MODEL FOR THE RESOURCE-CONSTRAINED PROJECT SCHEDULING PROBLEM WITH UNCERTAIN ACTIVITY DURATIONS

In researches of project scheduling, the majority is based on the hypothesis that the activity duration is deterministic. However, in the real world, a major challenge comes from the stochastic activity durations. In this paper, the current methods for the recourse-constraint project scheduling problem with uncertain activity durations' are reviewed and their deficiencies are discussed. Then, combining with the robust optimization concept, a new robust optimization model is proposed for the recourse-constraint project scheduling problem, in order to reduce the turbulence caused by uncertain activity durations during the project implementation, and to improve the robustness of the project schedules. A case example is employed to illustrate the new robust model. An ant colony algorithm is integrated to solve the above mentioned problem and to generate a robust solution. The project schedule is also tested in various scenarios to analyze its robustness. The results are discussed in details to explore potential opportunities of further extensions and improvement of the proposed model.