Tri-directional Scheduling Scheme: Theory and Computation

In this paper we introduce a new scheduling scheme based on so called tri-directional scheduling strategy to solve the well known resource constrained project scheduling problem. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of tri-directional scheduling scheme, it is incorporated into a priority rule based parallel scheduling scheme. Theoretical and numerical investigations show that the tri-directional scheduling scheme outperforms forward, backward and even bidirectional schemes depending on the problem structure and the priority rule used. Based on empirical evidence, it seems that as the number of activities are increased, the tri-directional scheduling scheme performs better irrespective of the priority rule used. This suggests that tri-directional scheme should also be applied within the category of heuristic methods.