A faster exact method for solving the robust multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem

Abstract: This paper presents a mixed-integer linear programming formulation for the multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem with uncertain activity durations. We consider a two-stage robust optimisation approach and find solutions that minimise the worst-case project makespan, whilst assuming that activity durations lie in a budgeted uncertainty set. Computational experiments show that this easy-to-implement formulation is many times faster than the current state-of-the-art solution approach for this problem, whilst solving over 40% more instances to optimality over the same benchmarking set.