2011 INFORMS Annual Meeting
Charlotte, NC
Studies in Activity Networks: A Guided Tour
Welcome and Opening Plenary
Salah E. Elmaghraby
University Professor of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering
North Carolina State University
Activity Networks (ANs) is a model for the planning and (dynamic) control of projects. I shall present a historical perspective of studies of the model from its inception over 50 years ago, and the various issues with which the original model of CPM/PERT has been enriched. These include: portfolio selection, the management of resources (including funds), the acquisition and dispensation of resources, coping with uncertainty (the popular name is "risk management"), and the graphical representation of progress to satisfy certain managerial desires. Of the myriad of issues raised in the field of project management and control, I shall elaborate on three areas of my continued research:
Assuming deterministic environment (Deterministic Activity Networks (DANs), can one resolve the "optimal crashing problem" under generalized precedence relations (GPRs)? How about the optimal scheduling of the activities subject to resource availabilities (the RCPSP under GPRs)?
Still under the assumption of DANs, how to schedule the activities subject to limited resource availabilities (including how much to acquire of these resources in the first place) in order to achieve certain objectives.
Assuming stochastic environment (Probabilistic Activity Networks (PANs), how to model, and cope with, uncertainty relative to specifying the start time of the various activities and the scheduling of the resources required for their execution.
Salah E. Elmaghraby has been University Professor of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering at North Carolina State University since 1967. Previously, he was an Associate Professor at Yale University and Research Leader at the Western Electric Engineering Research Center in Princeton, NJ. He was a Visiting Professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; the University of Alexandria, Egypt; the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium; University Lyon I, France; and the Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan. In addition, he has twelve years of industrial experience, including eight abroad. Elmaghraby has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University Lyon I. He has written four books, edited/co-edited three books (including the Handbook of Operations Research), authored/co-authored eight book chapters, and authored/co-authored over 118 scientific papers. He is a registered PE, a Fellow of the IIE and INFORMS, and a member of APICS and NSPE. He received a BSME from Cairo University, an MSIE from Ohio State University, and a PhD from Cornell University.