Dynamic and Stochastic Multi-Project Planning

This book deals with dynamic and stochastic methods for multi-project planning. Based on the idea of using queueing networks for the analysis of dynamic-stochastic multi-project environments thisbook addresses two problems:detailed scheduling of project activities, and integrated order acceptance and capacity planning. In an extensive simulation study, the book thoroughly investigates existing scheduling policies. To obtain optimal and near optimal scheduling policies new models and algorithms are proposed based on the theory of Markov decision processes and Approximate Dynamic programming. Then thebook presents a new model for the effective computation of optimal policies based on a Markov decision process.Finally, thebook provides insights into the structure of optimal policies.