Solution of fuzzy multi-objective project crashing problem

Abstract

Project management is a very important field employed for scheduling activities and monitoring the progress, in competitive and fluctuating environments. The feasible duration time required to perform a specific project is determined using critical path method. However, because of competitive priorities, time is important and the completion time of a project determined using critical path method should be reduced to meet a deadline requested. In this situation, project crashing problem arises. Project crashing analysis is concerned with shortening the project duration time by accelerating some of its activities at an additional cost. In general, the parameters of the problem are accepted as certain and the project crashing problems are solved using deterministic solution techniques. In reality, because of uncertain environment conditions, incomplete or unobtainable information, there can be ambiguity in the parameters of the problem. The uncertainty in the parameters can be modeled via fuzzy set theory. Using fuzzy models gives the chance of better project management decisions with more stability under uncertain environmental factors. In the literature, various authors solved different fuzzy versions of project management problems via transforming them into their crisp equivalents. In this study, a fuzzy multi-objective project crashing problem with fuzzy parameters is handled. The fuzzy project crashing problem is solved with a direct solution approach based on fuzzy ranking methods and the tabu search algorithm.