Enhanced Repetitive-Scheduling Computation and Visualization

Abstract

Whereas extensive literature exists on repetitive scheduling to help projects benefit from repetition and resource continuity, its underlying formulations suffer from serious challenges that often create less-efficient lengthy schedules. This paper, therefore, presents a framework with novel visuals and enhanced schedule computations that can generate shortest feasible schedules that address the key constraints of deadlines, limited resources, and nonidentical units. On the visual side, the framework integrates the LOB and Flowline visuals to enhance schedule legibility. On the computational side, it presents a novel three-step procedure to guarantee the shortest feasible schedules: (1) critical path method-line of balance (CPM-LOB) formulation of the number of parallel crews needed to meet deadlines; (2) interruption-time formulation to reduce schedule delay under crew limits; and (3) first-come first-served multicrew assignment process to reduce the schedule time-gaps and delays under nonidentical units. Manually-solved examples are used to demonstrate the power and streamlined applicability of the proposed framework. The paper is beneficial to both researchers and practitioners and contributes to mathematically generating legible and near-optimum repetitive schedules, under key constraints, without extra measures or sophisticated optimization.