Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2009 (2009), Article ID 106425, 10 pages
doi:10.1155/2009/106425
Research Article

A Priority Rule-Based Heuristic for Resource Investment Project Scheduling Problem with Discounted Cash Flows and Tardiness Penalties

Amir Abbas Najafi1 and Fatemeh Azimi2

1Department of Industrial Engineering, Qazvin Islamic Azad University, Nokhbegan Avenue, 34185-1416 Qazvin, Iran
2Department of Mathematics, Qazvin Islamic Azad University, Nokhbegan Avenue, 34185-1416 Qazvin, Iran

Received 4 November 2008; Revised 15 April 2009; Accepted 11 May 2009

Academic Editor: Wei-Chiang Hong

Copyright © 2009 Amir Abbas Najafi and Fatemeh Azimi. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Resource investment problem with discounted cash flows (RIPDCFs) is a class of project scheduling problem. In RIPDCF, the availability levels of the resources are considered decision variables, and the goal is to find a schedule such that the net present value of the project cash flows optimizes. In this paper, we consider a new RIPDCF in which tardiness of project is permitted with defined penalty. We mathematically formulated the problem and developed a heuristic method to solve it. The results of the performance analysis of the proposed method show an effective solution approach to the problem.