Resource scheduling principles and methods

Scheduling Resources and Outsourcing

In today's hyper-competitive world, efficient and effective scheduling of resources can make or break an organization. This challenge is compounded when multi-project scheduling comes into play. This paper will discuss two of the reasons why scheduling resources is such an important task and will describe how outsourcing project work can help alleviates some of the more common problems.

Every organization has a finite quantity of resources. These include human, financial, time, equipment, and other resources. Yet, the efficient and effective scheduling of these resources is important, for two primary reasons: profitability and productivity. First, if resources are not scheduled correctly, productivity falters. Reduced productivity means a loss of competitive advantage and can be a leading factor to a company's ultimate demise. Likewise, inefficient and/or ineffective scheduling of resources can lead to decreased profitability, which can also lead to organizational failure.

When an organization is faced with the challenge of having to schedule resources for multiple, simultaneously occurring projects, the strain on these limited resources is compounded. Now, not only do the needs of one project have to be taken into consideration, but two or more projects will be competing for the same resources. As an example, the objective, for project managers in a manufacturing facility using machines with a specified capacity constraint, are challenged to schedule their resources so that the total time, or makespan, to complete the multiple projects is minimized, working within the given machine capacity constraints (Zhang, Cai & Wong, 2004). For this reason, outsourcing of some or all of the product life cycle is often considered.