Abstract:

Multiple project scheduling at the operation level is an important part of multi-project management. Similarly， the program planning at the tactical level is also essential since it coordinates the relationships of projects. Based on the resource constrained multi-project scheduling problem， a new cascade scheduling method is proposed for programs to enhance linkages between the multi-project scheduling at operation level and program planning at the tactical level. The process of program planning and scheduling is analyzed， and a business process model is given for program cascade scheduling. The analytical target cascading （ATC） as a framework to construct the problem model of the program cascade scheduling problem， which minimizes the program duration under resource constraints and precedence relationship constraints within projects and between multiple projects. The algorithm for solving the program cascade optimization scheduling problem is proposed in combination with the ATC method. The algorithm runs from top to bottom and iteratively. The program at the tactical level allocates objectives and resources to each project at the operation level， and then each single project is scheduled independently. At the same time the feedback results are passed to the tactical level， where the program evaluates the scheduling results of the operation level. If the overall objectives of the program are not achieved， the program will coordinate the objectives and resources for all the projects again， and then reallocate goals and resources to each project. The process is repeated until the overall objective is achieved. A practical experiment is conducted comparing the proposed method with the traversal algorithm， and the results show that the method proposed in this paper has good computational efficiency and can meet the practical requirements of the program scheduling.

Key words: program scheduling, resource constrained project scheduling, analytical target cascading, multi-project scheduling