RESOURCE LEVELING AND RESOURCE SMOOTHING

Resource Leveling and Resource Smoothing



Resource Leveling and Resource Smoothing

Resource smoothing is part of the resource leveling process. In itself, resource smoothing is the process that, not withstanding any constraints imposed during the leveling process, attempts to determine a resource requirement that is "smooth" and where peaks and troughs are eliminated. For example, even if 7 units of a given resource are available at any one time, utilizing 5 of these units each week is preferable to 4 one week, 7 the next, 2 the next and so on. Even if there is no limit to the amount of any one resource available, it is still desirable that resource usage is as smooth as possible. Given that the resource requirements of those activities on the critical path are fixed, some order or priority needs to be established for selecting which activity and which particular resource associated with this activity should be given priority in the smoothing process. In determining which activity should be given priority, a subjective judgment should be made about the type of resource (or resources) associated with each activity; priority should be given to the activities whose resources are considered to be most important. Beyond this consideration, activities should be ranked in order of total work content and total float or slack available for that activity. A useful device for prioritizing is to consider the ratio of total work content/total float remaining and give priority to activities with the highest value of this ratio (Martin, 2002, 369-442).

Solving the resource scheduling problem for optimal solutions is extremely complex, particularly for large project networks with many different resource types. However, several heuristics are available to solve such problems. These heuristics allocate resources to activities to minimize project delay based on certain priority rules. The two most commonly used heuristics are the serial and the parallel methods. In the serial method of resource allocation, activities are sorted into a list and resources are allocated to each of these activities one at a time until resources are allocated to all activities. In the parallel method, however, resources are allocated on a period by period basis rather than each activity. In this method only those activities whose preceding activities have been completed will be considered. If two or more activities compete for the same resources, then allocation of resources is based on certain prescribed priority rules. Compared to ...