Exact Methods for Resource Leveling Problems

Resource leveling problems arise whenever it is expedient to reduce the fluctuations in resource utilization over time, while maintaining a prescribed project completion deadline. Several resource leveling objective functions may be defined, whose consideration results in resource profiles with desired properties, e.g., well-balanced resource profiles or profiles with a minimum number of jump discontinuities. In this chapter, we concentrate on three resource leveling problems that are known from the literature. In order to solve medium-scale instances of the considered problems, an enumeration scheme that uses problem structures is presented. Furthermore, mixed-integer (linear) programming models are introduced, and resource leveling instances are solved using CPLEX 12. In a comprehensive computational study, the performance of the described methods is analyzed.