Project-driven planning and scheduling support for virtual manufacturing

The paper addresses the issue of decision-making support for small and medium-size enterprises operating within a virtual project-driven enterprise environment. The problem considered here can be defined in terms of finding a feasible schedule that satisfies the constraints imposed by the work-order duration, the price, and the time-constrained resource availability. The problem belongs to the class of multi-mode case problems of project scheduling, where finding a feasible solution is NP-hard. A heuristic method for process planning and scheduling is proposed. The method is based on a critical path approach and the branch and bound search scheme. It has been implemented in a web-enabled interactive software package, and is illustrated using the example of a virtual construction enterprise. Received: February 2005 / Accepted: January 2006