ABSTRACT
Resource availability and shortages permeate organizations. Even in times of extreme resource shortage, pockets of limited availability reside in nooks and corners of any organization. To nd and redistribute such constrained resources require an enterprise-wide systems approach. Foraging for resource to reallocate is an essential part of project management. Where you think none exists, there may actually be plenty. You nd whatever is available through systematic search and realignment. This chapter addresses systematic resources allocation and management strategies. The differences between unconstrained PERT/CPM networks and resource-constrained networks are discussed. The resource loading and resource leveling strategies are presented. The resource idleness graph is introduced as a measure of the level of resource idleness in resource-constrained project schedules. Various resource allocation heuristics are presented. A procedure for calculating resource work rates to assess project productivity is presented. An example of a resource-constrained precedence diagramming method (PDM) network is presented. The chapter also illustrates the use of the new graphical tools, referred to as the critical resource diagram (CRD) and the resource schedule (RS) Gantt chart. The CRD is used to represent the interrelationships among resource units as they perform their respective tasks. It is also used to identify bottlenecked resources in a project network. The RS Gantt chart indicates time intervals of allocation for specic resource types. The chapter concludes with examples of probabilistic evaluation of resource utilization levels.
