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A Precedence Constraint Posting Approach

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Handbook on Project Management and Scheduling Vol.1

Part of the book series: International Handbooks on Information Systems ((INFOSYS))

Abstract

This chapter summarizes some previous work on a constraint-based scheduling approach effectively applied to Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling problems. The approach is based on a formulation of the problem as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP). In particular the problem is reduced to the one of establishing sufficient precedence constraints between activities that require the same resource so as to eliminate all possible resource contention, defining what is called the Precedence Constraint Posting (PCP) approach. The PCP scheduling approach has two attractive properties: first it operates in a search space that avoids over-commitment to specific activity start times, and can be more efficiently searched; second, the solution generated is a so-called “flexible schedule”, designating a set of acceptable futures, which provides a basis for efficiently responding to unexpected disruptions during execution. This chapter summarizes a body of work developed over the years on PCP-based scheduling to take advantage of such properties. In particular, the chapter presents an overview on a number of original algorithms for efficiently finding a solution to a scheduling problem, for generating robust schedules, and for searching near-optimal makespan solutions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The three field classification of RCPSP/max is PS | temp | C max .

  2. 2.

    Specifically, we follow a strategy of collecting sets of activities such that none of the sets is a subset of the others.

  3. 3.

    Although the reader should also note that these solutions are in general sub-optimal.

  4. 4.

    \(\mathit{Pred}(\mathit{source}) = \mathit{Succ}(\mathit{sink}) = \varnothing \).

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Acknowledgements

Authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for detailed comments to previous drafts of this chapter. Stephen Smith was supported in part by the US Air Force Research Laboratory under contracts FA8650-12-C-6269 and FA8750-12-C-0068, and the CMU Robotics Institute. CNR authors were supported by internal funds for basic research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR - Italian National Research Council, Rome, Italy

    Amedeo Cesta & Angelo Oddi

  2. European Space Operations Centre, European Space Agency, Darmstadt, Germany

    Nicola Policella

  3. Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Stephen F. Smith

Authors
  1. Amedeo Cesta
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  2. Angelo Oddi
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  3. Nicola Policella
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  4. Stephen F. Smith
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amedeo Cesta .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Management and Economics, Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany

    Christoph Schwindt

  2. Institute of Management and Economics, Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany

    Jürgen Zimmermann

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Cesta, A., Oddi, A., Policella, N., Smith, S.F. (2015). A Precedence Constraint Posting Approach. In: Schwindt, C., Zimmermann, J. (eds) Handbook on Project Management and Scheduling Vol.1. International Handbooks on Information Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05443-8_6

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