Resource leveling scheduling by an ant colony-based model

In project scheduling, many problems can arise when resource fluctuations are beyond acceptable limits. To overcome this, mathematical techniques have been developed for leveling resources. However, these produce a hard and inflexible approach in scheduling projects. The authors propose a simple resource leveling approach that can be used in scheduling projects with multi-mode execution activities. In the mentioned approach, an ant algorithm determines the execution mode of each activity so that resource leveling index and project time become optimum. In the model, some visibility functions (defined in accordance with problem characteristics) are utilized, and the best, which return the best result, is selected for the model.