A fuzzy robust scheduling approach for product development projects

Efficient scheduling of a product development project is difficult, since a development project is usually unique in nature and high level of design imprecision exists at the early stages of product development. Moreover, risk-averse project managers are often more interested in estimating the risk of a schedule being late over all potential realizations. The objective of this research is to develop a robust scheduling methodology based on fuzzy set theory for uncertain product development projects. The imprecise temporal parameters involved in the project are represented by fuzzy sets. A measure of schedule robustness based on qualitative possibility theory is proposed to guide the search process to determine the robust schedule; i.e., the schedule with the best worst-case performance. A genetic algorithm approach is developed for solving the problem with acceptable performance. An example of electronic product development project is used to illustrate the concept developed.