Bottleneck Identification in Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling via Constraint Relaxation

Lukáš Nedbálek, Lukáš Nedbálek, Antonín Novák

2025

Abstract

In realistic production scenarios, Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) tools often require manual intervention by production planners, as the system works with incomplete information, resulting in suboptimal schedules. Often, the preferable solution is not found just because of the too-restrictive constraints specifying the optimization problem, representing bottlenecks in the schedule. To provide computer-assisted support for decision-making, we aim to automatically identify bottlenecks in the given schedule while linking them to the particular constraints to be relaxed. In this work, we address the problem of reducing the tardiness of a particular project in an obtained schedule in the resource-constrained project scheduling problem by relaxing constraints related to identified bottlenecks. We develop two methods for this purpose. The first method adapts existing approaches from the job shop literature and utilizes them for so-called untargeted relaxations. The second method identifies potential improvements in relaxed versions of the problem and proposes targeted relaxations. Surprisingly, the untargeted relaxations result in improvements comparable to the targeted relaxations.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Nedbálek L. and Novák A. (2025). Bottleneck Identification in Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling via Constraint Relaxation. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES; ISBN 978-989-758-732-0, SciTePress, pages 340-347. DOI: 10.5220/0013253700003893

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icores25,
author={Lukáš Nedbálek and Antonín Novák},
title={Bottleneck Identification in Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling via Constraint Relaxation},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES},
year={2025},
pages={340-347},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013253700003893},
isbn={978-989-758-732-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES
TI - Bottleneck Identification in Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling via Constraint Relaxation
SN - 978-989-758-732-0
AU - Nedbálek L.
AU - Novák A.
PY - 2025
SP - 340
EP - 347
DO - 10.5220/0013253700003893
PB - SciTePress