Vlerick Repository

Recent Submissions

  • ItemMetadata only
    Probabilistic optimization of corrective actions for project deadline adherence in projects with stochastic activity durations
    (Springer Nature, 2026) Vaseghi, Forough; Vanhoucke, Mario
    Project control, as an iterative process crucial for managing project uncertainties, demands continual adaptation throughout the project’s lifespan. Activity duration unpredictability, inherents in project networks, poses challenges to meeting deadlines. In response, project managers collect real-time data and employ corrective actions to ensure timely and budget-compliant project delivery. Despite extensive research on project control methodologies, explicit methods for determining the optimal size of corrective actions in stochastic environments have received limited attention. This study addresses this gap by integrating probabilistic optimization models into project control strategies, emphasizing the minimization of corrective action costs. The model ensures that a specified percentile of the project duration distribution aligns with a predefined deadline, offering a probability of meeting the promised project duration. Two control strategies are proposed: preventive, involving a one-time optimization before project initiation, and protective, with continuous re-optimization at specific tracking periods during project execution. Computational experiments on artificial datasets reveal that protective strategies outperform preventive strategies, showing faster convergence and reduced variability in project duration distribution. Results indicate that, on average, a minimum of 6 re-optimizations during project execution is required to minimize both the cumulative cost of corrective actions and the average deviations between project duration realizations and the promised deadline.
  • ItemMetadata only
    A Simulation Study on the Impact of Activity Crashing on the Project Duration and Cost under Different Budget Release Scenarios
    (Polish Information Processing Society PTI, 2020) Song, Jie; Servranckx, Tom; Martens, Annelies; Vanhoucke, Mario
    The main goal of project control is to identify project opportunities or problems during project execution, such that corrective actions can be taken to bring the project in danger back on track when necessary. In this study, we define different scenarios to allocate the limited budget used for the cost of activity execution, delays, and corrective actions, according to the timing and amount of the budget release. A large computational experiment is conducted on real-life project data to evaluate the performance of each scenario. The results show that both the timing and amount of the budget release have an effect on project performance.
  • ItemMetadata only
    Static and Dynamic Determinants of Earned Value Based Time Forecast Accuracy
    (IGI Global, 2009) Kidd, Terry T; Vanhoucke, Mario
    It is well-known that well managed and controlled projects are more likely to be delivered on time and within budget. The construction of a (resource-feasible) baseline schedule and the follow-up during execution are primary contributors to the success or failure of a project. Earned value management systems have been set up to deal with the complex task of controlling and adjusting the baseline project schedule during execution. Although earned value systems have been proven to provide reliable estimates for the follow-up of cost performance, they often fail to predict the total duration of the project. In this chapter, results of a large simulation study to evaluate the forecast accuracy of earned value based predictive metrics are presented. No detailed mathematical calculations are presented in the chapter, but instead an overview from a project life cycle point-of-view is presented. Details can be found at the end of the chapter (key terms and definitions) or in the references cited throughout this chapter.
  • ItemMetadata only
    New Computational Results for the Discrete Time/Cost Trade-Off Problem with Time-Switch Constraints
    (SSRN Electronic Journal, 2003) Vanhoucke, Mario
    Recently, time-switch constraints have been introduced in literature by Yang and Chen (2000). Basically, these constraints impose a specified starting time on the project activities and force them to be inactive during specified time periods. This type of constraints have been incorporated into the well-known discrete time/cost trade-off problem in order to cope with day, night and weekend shifts. In this paper, we propose a new branch-and-bound algorithm which outperforms the previous one by Vanhoucke et al. (2002a). The procedure makes use of a lower bound calculation for the discrete time/cost trade-off problem (without time-switch constraints). The procedure has been coded in Visual C++, version 6.0 under Windows 2000 and has been validated on a randomly generated problem set.
  • ItemMetadata only
    How Many Types of Critical Activities Exist? A Conjecture in Need of Proof
    (Elsevier, 2016) Hajdu, M; Skibniewski, MJ; Vanhoucke, Mario; Horvath, A; Brilakis, I
    The Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM) is the prevalent scheduling technique used for temporal planning of projects. Critical paths require special attention during the course of planning as their lengths define the project duration. However, increasing/decreasing the duration of an activity on the critical path does not necessarily results in a longer/shorter project duration. Responses of the critical path in a PDM network for small changes of the duration of a critical activity can be classified into six categories, while nine different possible categories exist in theory. The modeling capabilities of PDM recently have been extended by the introduction of a) point-to-point relations, b) continuous relations, and c) non-linear activity (production-time) functions. The paper presents the following conjecture that needs a proof: The number of existing types of critical activities remains six when using the recently developed precedence relations and non-linear production-time functions for activities. The theory of the different types of critical activities is briefly discussed and the mathematical model of the generalized PDM technique is presented.An additional feature presented in the paper beyond defining the conjecture is the introduction of influence lines for project duration that have never been used in project management before. Influence lines can be of great help in understanding the nature of critical activities. Papers providing solutions or confuting this conjecture will be honored with the CCC 2017 award.