A Fuzzy Scheduling Methodology for Energy R&D Projects

Abstract

The efficient management of energy research and development (R&D) projects is important to reduce the required the development time and cost. However, each development project is unique and innovational in nature and the duration of activities involved in an energy R&D project often cannot be predicted accurately. The uncertainty of activity duration may lead to incorrect scheduling decisions. The objective of this paper is to develop a fuzzy scheduling methodology to deal with these problems. Fuzzy variables theory is used to model the uncertain and flexible temporal information. A fuzzy scheduling algorithm with depth-first search is developed to find the possible critical paths based on fuzzy expected value simulation. A numerical example with solar photovoltaics development project is used to illustrate the effectiveness of the methodology.