Robust Project Scheduling is to review the fundamentals of robust project scheduling through the deployment of proactive/reactive project scheduling procedures.

This title presents a large variety of models and algorithms dedicated to the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP), which aims at scheduling at minimal duration a set of activities subject to precedence constraints and limited resource availabilities. In the first part, the standard variant of RCPSP is presented and analyzed as a combinatorial optimization problem. Constraint programming and integer linear programming formulations are given. Relaxations based on these formulations and also on related scheduling problems are presented. Exact methods and heuristics are surveyed. Computational experiments, aiming at providing an empirical insight on the difficulty of the problem, are provided. The second part of the book focuses on several other variants of the RCPSP and on their solution methods. Each variant takes account of real-life characteristics which are not considered in the standard version, such as possible interruptions of activities, production and consumption of resources, cost-based approaches and uncertainty considerations. The last part presents industrial case studies where the RCPSP plays a central part. Applications are presented in various domains such as assembly shop and rolling ingots production scheduling, project management in information technology companies and instruction scheduling for VLIW processor architectures.

The well-known deterministic resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) involves the determination of a predictive schedule (baseline schedule or pre-schedule) of the project activities that satisfies the finish-start precedence relations and the renewable resource constraints under the objective of minimizing the project duration. This pre-schedule serves as a baseline for the execution of the project. During execution, however, the project can be subject to several types of disruptions that may disturb the baseline schedule. Management must then rely on a reactive scheduling procedure for revising or reoptimizing the pre-schedule. The objective of our research is to develop procedures for allocating resources to the activities of a given baseline schedule in order to maximize its stability. We propose two integer programming based heuristics and report on computational results obtained on a set of benchmark problems.

Due to the increasing importance of product differentiation and collapsing product life cycles, a growing number of value-adding activities in the industry and service sector are organized in projects. Projects come in many forms, often taking considerable time and consuming a large amount of resources. The management and scheduling of projects represents a challenging task and project performance may have a considerable impact on an organization's competitiveness. This handbook presents state-of-the-art approaches to project management and scheduling. More than sixty contributions written by leading experts in the field provide an authoritative survey of recent developments. The book serves as a comprehensive reference, both, for researchers and project management professionals. The handbook consists of two volumes. Volume 1 is devoted to single-modal and multi-modal project scheduling. Volume 2 presents multi-project problems, project scheduling under uncertainty and vagueness, managerial approaches and a separate part on applications, case studies and information systems.

Project management can be broadly defined as the process of managing, allocating and timing resources to achieve given objectives in an efficient and expedient manner. The objectives of the book cover three areas: classification; procedures; and problems.

Optimal and Robust Scheduling for Networked Control Systems tackles the problem of integrating system components—controllers, sensors, and actuators—in a networked control system. It is common practice in industry to solve such problems heuristically, because the few theoretical results available are not comprehensive and cannot be readily applied by practitioners. This book offers a solution to the deterministic scheduling problem that is based on rigorous control theoretical tools but also addresses practical implementation issues. Helping to bridge the gap between control theory and computer science, it suggests that the consideration of communication constraints at the design stage will significantly improve the performance of the control system. Technical Results, Design Techniques, and Practical Applications The book brings together well-known measures for robust performance as well as fast stochastic algorithms to assist designers in selecting the best network configuration and guaranteeing the speed of offline optimization. The authors propose a unifying framework for modelling NCSs with time-triggered communication and present technical results. They also introduce design techniques, including for the codesign of a controller and communication sequence and for the robust design of a communication sequence for a given controller. Case studies explore the use of the FlexRay TDMA and time-triggered control area network (CAN) protocols in an automotive control system. Practical Solutions to Your Time-Triggered Communication Problems This unique book develops ready-to-use engineering tools for large-scale control system integration with a focus on robustness and performance. It emphasizes techniques that are directly applicable to time-triggered communication problems in the automotive industry and in avionics, robotics, and automated manufacturing.

Our objectives in writing Project Scheduling: A Research Handbook are threefold: (1) Provide a unified scheme for classifying the numerous project scheduling problems occurring in practice and studied in the literature; (2) Provide a unified and up-to-date treatment of the state-of-the-art procedures developed for their solution; (3) Alert the reader to various important problems that are still in need of considerable research effort. Project Scheduling: A Research Handbook has been divided into four parts. Part I consists of three chapters on the scope and relevance of project scheduling, on the nature of project scheduling, and finally on the introduction of a unified scheme that will be used in subsequent chapters for the identification and classification of the project scheduling problems studied in this book. Part II focuses on the time analysis of project networks. Part III carries the discussion further into the crucial topic of scheduling under scarce resources. Part IV deals with robust scheduling and stochastic scheduling issues. Numerous tables and figures are used throughout the book to enhance the clarity and effectiveness of the discussions. For the interested and motivated reader, the problems at the end of each chapter should be considered as an integral part of the presentation.

A project planning and decision support model is developed and applied to identify and reduce risk and uncertainty in deconstruction project planning. It allows calculating building inventories based on sensor information and construction standards and it computes robust project plans for different scenarios with multiple modes, constrained renewable resources and locations. A reactive and flexible planning element is proposed in the case of schedule infeasibility during project execution.