Multi-skill project scheduling with skill evolution and cooperation effectiveness

Purpose Recently, there has been increasing focus on the development of multi-skilled workforce in project management. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a multi-skill project scheduling problem (MSPSP), which combines project scheduling and multi-skill personnel assignment. The distinct features of skill evolution and cooperation effectiveness are considered in the problem to maximize the total project effectiveness and skill development simultaneously. Design/methodology/approach The Bi-objective non-linear integer programming (LIP) models are formulated for the problem using three types of skill development objective function: number of experts, total skill increment and "bottleneck" skill increment. Non-linear models are then linearized through several linearization techniques, and the epsilon-constraint method is used to convert the bi-objective models into single-objective models. Findings A construction project case is used to validate the proposed models. In comparison with models that do not consider skill evolution and cooperation effectiveness, the models proposed in this paper offer more realistic solutions and show better performance with regard to both project effectiveness and skill development. Originality/value This research extends the current MSPSP by considering skill evolution based on the "learning effect" as well as the influence of cooperation in an activity-based team, which are common phenomena in practice but seldom studied. LIP models formulated in this paper can be solved by any off-the-shelf optimization solver, such as CPLEX. Besides, the proposed LIP models can offer better project scheduling and personnel assignment plan, which would be of immense practical value in project management applications.