A fuzzy robust scheduling approach for product development projects

Efficient scheduling of a product development project is difficult, since a development project is usually unique in nature and high level of design imprecision exists at the early stages of product development. Moreover, risk-averse project managers are often more interested in estimating the risk of a schedule being late over all potential realizations. The objective of this research is to develop a robust scheduling methodology based on fuzzy set theory for uncertain product development projects. The imprecise temporal parameters involved in the project are represented by fuzzy sets. A measure of schedule robustness based on qualitative possibility theory is proposed to guide the search process to determine the robust schedule; i.e., the schedule with the best worst-case performance. A genetic algorithm approach is developed for solving the problem with acceptable performance. An example of electronic product development project is used to illustrate the concept developed. (C) 2002 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.