A combinatorial optimization solution for activity prioritizing problem

This paper discusses a particular situation in project management in which an analyst attempts to prioritize several independent activities to handle all of them one by one in such a way that there would be no precedence relationships over the activities. The novelty of this research is that the structure of prioritized activities is linear in arrangement which can be considered as a combinatorial optimization problem. The paper formulates a mathematical model and applies it to two real cases in the oil and gas industry. In addition, a row generation procedure is developed to solve largescale problems and the computational results for the problem instances of size up to 300 activities are reported. The results demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed methodology. (c) 2023 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.