Title: A tabu search method for block erection scheduling in shipbuilding with activity resource elasticity

Authors: Lei Wang; Lanshun Nie; Dechen Zhan

Addresses: Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215163, China ' School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China ' School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China

Abstract: Traditional optimisation method for block erection scheduling in shipbuilding assumes that the activity durations are determined, and usually takes the minimisation of project makespan as the objective. We analyse the activities in the process of block erection, and address the characteristic of activity resource elasticity that the duration of some activities was elastic and could be impressed by the means of increasing the amount of resource availability. In this paper, we propose an optimisation method for block erection scheduling problem in shipbuilding with the objective of minimising the project cost and project deadline, which is an extension of Resource Availability Cost Problem (RACP). The proposed method is a global research algorithm based on tabu search strategy. Experimental results for the simulation proved the effect of the characteristic of activity resource elasticity for the scheduling problem, and tested the performance of our algorithm.

Keywords: block erection scheduling; shipbuilding projects; activity resource elasticity; tabu search; neighbourhood structure; optimisation; project costs; project deadlines; project management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2016.079864

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2016 Vol.54 No.3, pp.220 - 228

Received: 22 Sep 2015
Accepted: 06 Nov 2015
Published online: 19 Oct 2016 *

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