The discrete time/cost trade-off problem: extensions and heuristic procedures

Time/cost trade-offs in project networks have been the subject of extensive research since the development of the critical path method (CPM) in the late 50s. Time/cost behaviour in a project activity basically describes the trade-off between the duration of the activity and its amount of non-renewable resources (e.g., money) committed to it. In the discrete version of the problem (the discrete time/cost trade-off problem), it is generally accepted that the trade-off follows a discrete non-increasing pattern, i.e., expediting an activity is possible by allocating more resources (i.e., at a larger cost) to it. However, due to its complexity, the problem has been solved for relatively small instances. In this paper we elaborate on three extensions of the well-known discrete time/cost trade-off problem in order to cope with more realistic settings: time/switch constraints, work continuity constraints, and net present value maximization. We give an extensive literature overview of existing procedures for these problem types and discuss a new meta-heuristic approach in order to provide near-optimal heuristic solutions for the different problems. We present computational results for the problems under study by comparing the results for both exact and heuristic procedures. We demonstrate that the heuristic algorithms produce consistently good results for two versions of the discrete time/cost trade-off problem.