Resolution of resource conflicts in the CCPM framework using a local search method

We propose approximate methods for resolving resource conflicts in the Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) method. The CCPM method consists of five processes. Effective approaches for four of the five processes already exist. For the remaining unresolved process, namely the resolving of resource conflicts, an effective method has yet to be proposed. Hence, we develop three simple approximate solving methods, and improve these using a local search. Methods based on the earliest and latest start times are used. The local search method undertakes a basic search by swapping the processing order of two arbitrary tasks. Through numerical experimentation, we found that these solving methods are practical if the number of outputs is one. In addition, the average value of the solutions obtained by the three simple methods was improved by up to approximately 10% when a local search was used if the number of tasks was 50.