Project scheduling under limited resources

Project scheduling using the critical path method (CPM) is widely used in the construction and manufacturing industries, among others. But a fundamental assumption made while implementing CPM is that the resources are infinite. The project scheduling problem becomes difficult to solve when the resources required for the completion of each activity are available in limited amounts. Such a problem with precedence and resource constraints is termed a resource-constrained project scheduling (RCPS) problem. Solving this problem is a theoretical challenge and an important tool for practitioners. We propose an algorithm that uses the tabu search for the RCPS problem. The algorithm has been tested using the standard 110 benchmark problems of Patterson. The results are very encouraging.