Using Combinations of Heuristics

to Schedule Activities of
Constrained Multiple Resource Projects
Lucy C. Morse, John O. McIntosh
and Gary E. Whitehouse
University of Central Florida,
Orlando, Florida
roject managers face ongoing challenges in
managing projects. A project must be
accomplished in minimum time, with minimum cost, and limited resources. Because of economic factors, the project manager must make
the best use of these limited resources within a
specific time frame. Project managers use a variety of techniques to accomplish this scheduling.
The most common approaches to project
scheduling are two traditional techniques that
developed in the late 1950s. One is the Critical
Path Method (CPM), the other, Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). Although
CPM is strictly deterministic and with PERT
there is an uncertainty in the activity time estimates, the methods within these techniques are
quite similar. Both are computer-oriented, define
arrow network diagrams, and define the concept
of a critical path. For these reasons, PERT and
CPM are referred to jointly in this paper as
PERT/CPM.
Network analysis is a decision-making tool for
all levels of management. It may be used at various
stages of project management, from initial planning or analyzing of alternatives to scheduling and
controlling activities that comprise the project.

Statement of the Problem

Basic PERT/CPM methods commonly used for
network analysis do not consider the availability
of resources in the scheduling process. The constraints used with these networks are those of
precedence only. Commercial microcomputer
project management software packages have the
34

Project Management Journal

ability to consider constrained resources. The

problem according to Johnson [10] is that no
package consistently finds a schedule in which
the project completion time is minimized when
resources are considered.
When resources are taken into consideration,
the constraints must consider both precedence
and resource requirements. With limited
resources the beginning time of some activities
may be delayed beyond the unconstrained schedule. Thus, if a resource is available only in limited
amounts, the schedule produced without considering resources has the potential to be both inaccurate and unfeasible. When resources are limited, the duration of the project could be longer.
When certain tasks must be coordinated to
avoid resource and timing conflicts, the project
manager seeks guidance on which activities to
schedule and which to delay [4]. Also the project
schedule may be dynamic and have a direct relationship with the availability of resources [15].
The general approach for allocating constrained resources to activities is to assign priorities to the competing activities in the network
according to some criterion. When the precedence conditions are satisfied and adequate
resources exist, these activities are scheduled
according to the priorities. Scheduling an activity
that requires multiple resources is more complex
than those requiring only single resources. All
resources needed for the activity must be available before an activity may occur. If only one
resource of several needed is unavailable, that
particular activity is delayed, while other activities continue to be scheduled according to the
priorities. A setback in any of the critical activities may delay the entire project.
According to Davis [5], existing constrainedresource scheduling procedures may be classified
into two major categories. One category is to use
March 1996

optimal procedures that produce true minimum

duration schedules. The other is to use some predetermined rule-of-thumb or heuristic to set priorities for finding the duration of the project.
Although optimal procedures produce true
minimum durations, the disadvantage of using
optimal procedures is the lengthy and complicated computational time [7][9][12]. Optimal procedures using the least computational time are
those involving some form of implicit enumeration, such as branch and bound procedures.
Since for any given problem there are a large
number of possible combinations of activity start
time, these constrained-resource problems are in
a field of mathematical problems known as combinatorial problems. Analytical methods have not
proven very successful on these combinatorial
problems, thus various heuristic-based procedures have been developed. Within this study the
accepted definition of a heuristic is Moders [12]:
a rule of thumba simple, easy to use aid in
problem solving.

About the Authors

Lucy Morse is director of the Central Florida Consortium of Higher Education and is project manager for Distance Learning. Prior to
serving as a program manager in
the Engineering Directorate at the
National Science Foundation, she
was a member of the Industrial
Engineering and Management
Systems (IEMS) faculty at the
University of Central Florida,
where she received her Ph.D.
John McIntosh is the assistant chair of the IEMS
Department at the University of
Central Florida, where he teaches
engineering management courses, with an emphasis on cost
engineering. He has over 11 years
of industrial management experience with Texas Instruments,
General Electric, and others.
Gary E. Whitehouse is provost and vice president
for academic affairs at the University of Central Florida. He previously served as dean in the College of Engineering and chair of
the IEMS Department. He earned
his Ph.D. at Arizona State and
served on the faculty at Leigh
University.

March 1996

Heuristic procedures are capable of quickly

solving complex problems that would be extremely difficult if not impossible to solve otherwise [3].
Heuristics might lead to optimal solutions, but
they do not guarantee them. Using different heuristic procedures on the same constrained-resource
network can easily produce different duration
times, since rules that perform well on one problem may perform poorly on another [12]. Many
different heuristics exist today. They include those
offered by commercial computer programs, elaborate and precise computer heuristics, and simple
general rules [7]. Since no single heuristic scheduler is consistently best, commercial project management packages usually do not create optimal
schedules when resources are constrained [10].

Objective of the Study

The main objective of this study is to find a simple and quick procedure for scheduling activities
of a constrained multiple-resource single-project
network that will minimize project duration and
lower project costs. Based upon the survey of
previous research [1][3][7][8][13][14], ten simple
rule-of-thumb heuristics are selected and applied
to 108 multiple-resource network problems.
This study then looks at determining the combination of heuristics giving the minimum delay
time rather than looking at the top ranking three
or four heuristics. The previous studies have
shown that no one heuristic always produces the
minimum duration on every problem. Since
some rules perform better on certain types of
problems, a combination of heuristics should
have minimum durations for most types of network problems. The reason for using combinations of heuristics in this evaluation is an attempt
to improve the solution of constrained multipleresource networks.
This study evaluates constrained multipleresource networks using combinations of two or
more heuristic methods to allocate these
resources and minimize the total project delay.
This is accomplished by first determining project
durations using a package network scheduling
program in combination with an additional algorithm for allocating resources according to the
different heuristic methods. Then with these
results a combination of two or more heuristics
that give minimum delay time is determined.

Description of Network Problems

For evaluating the heuristic procedures selected,
108 test problems from Pattersons benchmark
problem set [obtained from James H. Patterson,
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Using Combinations of Heuristics to Schedule Activities of Constrained Multiple Resource Projects

problem set on disk, 1986] with optimal solutions and a heuristic solution were used. According to Patterson [14], these problems represent
an accumulation of all readily available multiple
resource problems existing in the literature. This
problem data set has been previously solved and
analyzed by others using various approaches
[2][6][7][10][11][17]. Optimal durations included with the problem set were obtained by Stinson Branch and Bound [16]. The number of
activities included in the test problems varies
between 7 and 51, with the number of resource
types required per activity varying between one
and three with only four networks having less
than three resources. Of these problems, 89 have
between 22 and 27 activities and ten problems
consist of 51 activities.
In this study, ten simple priority-rule based
heuristics are used to determine priorities for
activities competing for constrained resources.
They vary from simple single attribute heuristic
to simple multiple attribute heuristic and include
rules found effective in previous literature.
The heuristics used to determine the priorities
and the explanation of their coding is:
1. Longest Activity First (LAF): Priority given
to the activity with the longest activity.
2. Shortest Job First (SJF): Priority given to
the activity with the shortest duration.
3. First Come First Served (FCFS): Priority given
to the activity with the lowest activity number.
4. Latest Finish Time (LFT): Priority given to
the activity with the earliest PERT/CPM calculated late finish time.
5. Minimum Early Finish (MEF): Priority
given to the activity with the earliest PERT/CPM
calculated early finish time.
6. Minimum Slack First (MSF): Priority given
to the activity with the least PERT/CPM calculated
slack time.
7. Maximum Slack First (Max SF): Priority
given to the activity with the greatest PERT/CPM
calculated slack time.
8. ACTIM: Priority given to the activity with
the maximum ACTIM value. The ACTIM value
of an activity is calculated as the maximum time
that the activity controls through the network on
any one path [1].
9. ACTRES: Priority given to activity with the
maximum ACTRES value. The ACTRES value is
calculated by multiplying each activitys time by
the sum of its resources and then finding the
maximum ACTRES that an activity controls
through the network on any one path [1].
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Project Management Journal

10. Resources Over Time (ROT): Priority

given to the activity with the maximum ROT
value. The ROT value is calculated by dividing
the sum of each activitys resources by the duration of the activity and then finding the maximum ROT that an activity controls through the
network on any one path [8].
The heuristics are used with the serial approach,
with activity priority being determined during the
scheduling procedure, but based on PERT/CPM
calculations obtained at the beginning of the scheduling procedure. For all heuristics, ties are broken
by the lowest activity number first and then once
an activity is started it is not interrupted.

Formulation of Algorithm
The project networks were scheduled using an
expanded version of Activity-on-Node Network
Analysis published in Project Management: IIE
Microsoftware [18]. Each of the 108 network
problems was first solved independently using
the ten heuristic methods previously described.
With a matrix of problem durations for each
of the ten scheduling heuristics, an attempt now is
made to find what combination of those heuristics gives the best results. Best is defined as
the minimum project duration. The combination
is a solution subset of two or more heuristics with
groups lowest mean, not necessarily the group of
heuristics with the lowest individual mean.
A heuristic computer algorithm was developed
to find which combination of heuristics minimizes
the durations of constrained resource project networks. An important difference between this
algorithm and other methods used to find the top
performing heuristics for allocating constrained
resources is that the objective here is to find
which combination or subset of heuristics minimizes project duration and meets this objective by
finding the average of the minimum durations.

Results
Using the computer algorithm to find the combination of heuristics giving the best answer was
applied to the durations of a group of 108 network problems. The means of the percentage
increase above optimum for each individual
heuristic and each combination of heuristics is
given in Table 1. As can be seen, the combination
of heuristics performed best. ACTIM with the
lowest mean percentage increase is a 5.2 percent
increase above optimum compared to the combination of two heuristics, which is 3.8 percent or
the combination of four heuristics, which is 2.9
percent above optimum.
March 1996

Table 1. Percentage Increase Above Optimum for Each Individual Heuristic

and for the Combination of Heuristics
Heuristic
Percentage Increase
Combination Size
Percentage Increase
MAX SF . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8
SJF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2
LAF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.9
ROT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8
MEF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7
MSF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7
FCFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7
LFT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7
ACTRES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7
ACTIM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2

Table 2. Solution Subset Results for All Problems

Subset size
Heuristic

1*

ACTIM

ACTIM

ACTIM

ACTIM

ACTIM

ACTIM

ACTIM

LFT

LFT

LFT

LFT

LFT

LFT

ROT

ROT

ROT

ROT

ROT

ACTRES

ACTRES

ACTRES

ACTRES

MEF

MEF

MEF

FCFS

FCFS
SJF

Percent Increase
Above Optimum

5.2

3.79

3.23

2.91

2.77

2.71

2.68

*Heuristic with lowest mean, not found by algorithm

A summary of the combination of heuristics

results is given in Table 2. The size of the solution subset is shown with the heuristic combination for each subset. Also shown is the percentage increase of the combination of
heuristics above the optimum duration. These
values were obtained by computing the difference (in time units) between the combination of
heuristics minimum duration and the optimum
duration for each problem as a percentage of
the optimum, and then taking the mean of this
difference.
Table 2 shows, for example, that when the
solution subset size is four, the combination of
heuristics is ACTIM, LFT, ROT, and ACTRES.
Using this combination the percentage increase
of the heuristics above optimum is 2.91 percent.
In comparing the combination of heuristics in
the solution subset of four to the four individual
heuristics with the lowest mean, one heuristic is
March 1996

different. ACTIM, LFT, and ACTRES have the

three lowest means and are in the subset while
ROT is in the solutions subset and ranks sixth on
an individual comparison. ACTIM and LFT have
been successful heuristics in previous research,
and ACTRES and ROT take into consideration
the resources used.
Table 3 is a summary of the number of network problems that obtain optimal duration
using the different priority approaches. The
heuristics used by Patterson [14] only gave optimum durations twenty-seven times while the
combinations of heuristics of sizes three, four and
five gave forty-five, forty-six, and forty-eight,
respectively. Looking at these results, combinations of simple heuristics give more optimum
durations and a lower percentage of error than
other heuristics evaluated in this study.
Johnson [10] used the same set of Pattersons
network problems. His study examined different
Project Management Journal

37

Using Combinations of Heuristics to Schedule Activities of Constrained Multiple Resource Projects

Table 3. Summary of 108 Network Problems Obtaining Optimal Duration

Using Different Priority Approaches
Scheduling Priority Approach
Number of Optimum Durations
Max SF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
SJF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
MEF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
ROT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
LAF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
FCFS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
MSF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Patterson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
LFT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
ACTRES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
ACTIM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Combination of 3 Heuristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Combination of 4 Heuristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Combination of 5 Heuristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

commercial software packages and found the

durations of all the network problems. A comparison was then made to the optimal durations
by Talbot [17], similar to the current study.
Table 4 gives the best of Johnsons results. The
results show that none of the commercial packages performed as well as the combination of
heuristics did.

Conclusion
This study presents a combination of heuristics
that find the average of the minimum durations
for the constrained resource problem. This combination not only supports previous research on
heuristic methods for setting priorities for constrained resource problems, but also produces
results that are significantly better than those
obtained by single heuristics. Due to the variable
nature of network structure and resource availability, different heuristics are more applicable to
certain network problems. For this reason using a
combination of heuristics gives a better chance of
approaching the optimum duration.
Combination of Heuristics. The main objective of this study was to examine constrained
multiple-resource single-project networks using
combinations of two or more heuristic methods
to allocate these resources and minimize the
total project delay. Ten simple rule-of-thumb
heuristics were selected and applied to a series of
networks. The heuristics are Shortest Job First
(SJF), First Come First Served (FCFS), Latest
Finish Time (LFT), Minimum Slack First (MSF),
38

Project Management Journal

Minimum Early Finish (MEF), Maximum Slack

First (Max SF), Longest Activity First (LAF),
ACTIM, ACTRES, and Resources Over Time
(ROT). These heuristics were applied to 108
multiple resource network problems that have
been previously solved and analyzed by others.
The project durations were determined using a
package network program with an additional
algorithm for allocating resources. With these
results, a heuristic computer algorithm determined which combination or subset of heuristics
gave the best results.
When the solution subset is two, the best performing heuristics are ACTIM and LFT, which
were found by Davis [7] to be the most successful heuristics in achieving optimality. What is
different is that when the solution subset size is
three and four, the additional heuristics,
ACTRES and ROT, involve resources over the
remaining network path. For example, when
using a solution subset of four the percentage
above optimum is 2.9 and two of the heuristics
used consider the resources in determining the
priorities of the activities.
The four heuristics used when the subset size is
four take into consideration the remaining path
length of the network for scheduling priorities.
ACTIM is based on the value of the final critical
path time minus the latest start time of that activity. LFT is found by using a backward pass of conventional critical path methods. ACTRES and
ROT consider durations and resources over the
remaining path.
March 1996

Table 4. Summary of the Most Successful of Johnsons (1992) Study of

Commercial Software Packages
Commercial Software Package

Number of Optimal Durations

Harvard TPM II/3.0. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

SuperProject Expert 1.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
SuperProject 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
MS Project for Windows 3.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Hornet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Timeline 2.0/4.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Since ROT used individually does not perform as

well as some other heuristics, the characteristics of
ROT let it handle some types of network problems
more effectively. Further investigation of resourcerelated heuristic performances and individual problem characteristics should be considered.
The developers of commercial packages that
were less successful in providing optimal solutions should examine using a combination of
heuristics for each network to achieve more optimal solutions.
Limitations. A possible limitation to using the
results of this study is the size of network problems encountered. Practical project scheduling
could include hundreds of activities. The largest
problems used in this study had fifty-one activities,
although Pascoe [13] concluded that the most
effective heuristics for small networks were also
effective for larger networks and that network size
does not change the results.
An assumption made for this study is that total
units of available resources remain constant
throughout the project. Once an activity is completed and frees the resource, it is available for further use. On an actual project this might not be the
case. This study does not consider resource leveling. Once personnel are hired or equipment is on
site, they are alternately used or unused.
Future Research. There are several areas for
further research based on this study. Investigation
of different heuristic performances and individual problem characteristics could be considered
in the future. Although the results obtained with
the combination of heuristics in this evaluation
outperformed the other rules compared.
Another possible area for research is the tiebreaking rule. Here, the lowest-numbered activity
was always taken first. A number of different
rules could be tried with different heuristics.
These include: activity with the most resources,
activity with the least slack, activity with the
March 1996

shortest duration. Also, since the heuristics considering resources gave better results for some
problems, more resource-related heuristics should
be investigated.
Although this study was developed to find the
combination of heuristics giving the average of
minimum project durations, the program could
be changed to minimize the maximum error, if
that is the objective.
Combinations of heuristics to schedule project
activities give more optimal solutions than other
methods previously used. This combination of
heuristics not only supports the previous research
on successful simple heuristic methods that set
the priorities for constrained resource problems,
but also produces results that are significantly
better than those obtained by single heuristics.
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