A robust scheduling of projects with time, cost, and quality considerations

Abstract

Quality is one of the main pillars that should be effectively considered in managing of industrial projects. In traditional project scheduling problems, only the time and cost are considered without the quality parameters. In this paper, it is suggested that the quality parameter is embedded into the traditional time-cost trade-off problem to develop a time, cost, and quality trade-off problem (TCQTP) with some practical assumptions. To the best of our knowledge, this problem has not been extensively treated in literature yet. The contributions of this article are in threefold: (1) incorporating a practical assumption to the TCQTP that is a relaxation of deterministic assumption to stochastic ones, which no paper has ever attempted to consider it in TCQTP; (2) relaxing the linearity assumption of time function, cost function, and quality function to a general form; and (3) integrating the TCQTP with a robust solution method to minimize the variation effect on time, cost, and quality. Computational experiments, which were done on benchmark problem, show the applicability and good performance of suggested TCQTP.

An overview on robust design hybrid metamodeling: Advanced methodology in process optimization under uncertainty

“…3-The trade-off between time, cost and quality has not been extensively done in the literature yet for problems under uncertainty (Salmasnia et al, 2012). This subject is vital for appropriate scheduling of projects in practice.…”

A New Model for Solving Time-Cost-Quality Trade-Off Problems in Construction

“…Objective functions are often involved with project quality, which is expressed as the average or minimum activity quality. The minimum activity quality is used to depict the weakness of the project [1–2], whereas the average is employed to replace project quality with intermediate value of activity quality [3]. Besides, a linear combination method of the average and minimum is presented by allocating weights in advance [4].…”

“…Kim et al (2012) considered the potential quality loss cost for excessive crashing activities and proposed a mixed integer linear programming model, but the assumption that crashing leads to potential quality loss cost is not always realised [13]. Moreover, there is another way to prevent the linearity assumption: Salmasnia et al (2012) incorporated non-linear stochastic programming into the trade-off problem to minimize the variation effect on time, cost, and quality, but it is controversial to believe that any change to the resource input must influence quality [1]. Liberatore and Pollack-Johnson (2013) introduced a bivariate normal function of time and cost to describe task quality and conducted estimation and data fitting for two case studies to maximize the minimum activity qualities [14].…”

A new approach to time-cost-quality tradeoff problem for construction project

“…Kim August 17-19, 2014 Helsinki, Finland objective is to minimize the direct cost and PQLC [9] , but the assumption that crashing leads to potential quality loss cost is not always realized. Salmasnia et al incorporated non-linear stochastic programming into tradeoff problem and adopted a robust solution method to minimize the variation effect on time, cost, and quality [10] , but it is controversial to believe that the change of resource input would influence quality. Liberatore and Pollack-Johnson introduced the bivariate normal function of time and cost to describe task quality and conducted Estimation and Data Fitting for two case studies to maximize the minimum of activity qualities [11] , but the assumption that the activity duration is independent of its cost is not practical.…”