A comparison of dispatching rules for executing a resource-constrained project with estimated activity durations

Abstract

This research examines the performance of 13 dispatching rules for executing a resource-constrained project whose estimated activity durations may differ from the actual activity durations. The dispatching rules are tested in environments characterized by three factors, namely, the order strength of the precedence relationship, the level of resource availability and the level of estimation errors in the activity durations. The results show that project environment affects only the performance differences but not the grouping of the better dispatching rules. The greatest number of successors, rank positional weight, greatest cumulative resource requirement and minimum activity slack dispatching rules consistently perform better than the other dispatching rules, unaffected by the accuracy of the estimated activity durations. This finding validates the results of many past studies in the deterministic project environment for choosing the right dispatching rule for both projects with and without well-estimated activity durations.