New Proactive Time Buffer Heuristics for Robust Project Scheduling

Robust scheduling is aiming at constructing proactive schedules capable of dealing with multiple disruptions during project execution. Insertion a time buffer, before an activity start time, is a method to improve the robustness (stability) of a baseline schedule. In this paper, we introduce new heuristics for inserting time buffers in a given baseline schedule while the project due date is predefined and stochastic activity duration is considered. Computational results obtained from a set of benchmark projects show that the proposed heuristics capable of generating proactive schedules with acceptable quality and solution robustness.