Heuristics for multimode scheduling problems with dedicated resources

We study scheduling problems with multiple modes and dedicated resources arising in production and project management, which constitute a special class of the general multimode resource-constrained project scheduling problem. A task may require simultaneously a set of discrete, renewable resources to be processed and the processing can be performed in different modes, that is with different resource sets, processing times, or costs. Precedence constraints can exist among tasks. The total budget that can be allocated to the project can be limited. The problem consists of identifying a mode for each task and a starting time for its processing respecting precedence, resource, and budget constraints. A graph model and an iterative solution scheme are presented. Specific heuristic algorithms for the cases with and without budget constraints are given and computational results are discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.