Variable Neighbourhood Heuristic for the Resource Levelling Problem

Abstract

This paper explores the use of a heuristic method based on Simulated Annealing with variable neighbourhood as an optimisation technique for the Resource Levelling Problem. Resource levelling is one of the resource constrained project scheduling problems. Its objective is to adjust the start dates of individual activities within a project in order to minimise the maximum resource level such as manpower, over the duration of the project while maintaining all given precedence relations. It is an NP-Hard combinatorial optimisation problem with major applications in manufacturing industries. It is concluded that, Increasing Variable Neighbourhood on Simulated Annealing is a reasonably good heuristic for the Resource Levelling Problem