Applying System Approach to the Project Scheduling Problem

In the real world, project scheduling problems are affected by complexity. Studying an NP-hard scheduling problem is a difficult task, particularly for the problems with high degree of size and complexity. Project scheduling problem is an inherently multi-objective problem since managers want to finish projects as soon as possible with the minimum cost and the maximum quality. In this paper we introduce the most common objective functions in the project scheduling problem. We try to provide a system approach to this problem in order to analyze factors and main objectives in interaction with each other. To reach this goal Vensim software is used to apply system approach to the problem. We propose a causal diagram to illustrate connections and a flow diagram for a selected problem. Finally, results of two scenarios proposed are analyzed