Title: Optimal sequencing of design projects' activities using discrete particle swarm optimisation

Authors: Hisham M. Abdelsalam; Amany M. Mohamed

Addresses: Operations Research and Decision Support Department, Faculty of Computers and Information, Cairo University, 5 Ahmed Zewail St., Orman, Giza, 12613, Egypt. ' Decision Support and Future Studies Center, Faculty of Computers and Information, Cairo University, 5 Ahmed Zewail St., Orman, Giza, 12613, Egypt

Abstract: The design structure matrix (DSM) has received considerable attention in literature as a tool that provides a compact and clear representation of activities and the relationships among these activities in product development projects. As much of the time and cost of such projects is attributable to its iterative nature, determining the optimal sequence of project activities for efficient execution becomes a necessity. This paper presents a discrete particle swarm optimisation (DPSO) algorithm that determines the optimal sequence of activities execution within a product development or a design project that minimises project total iterative time. Algorithm performance was compared with published results and outperformed used methods. It was also used to minimise three other objective functions: iterative time/cost, number of feedbacks and total feedback length.

Keywords: product development projects; design structure matrix; DSM; discrete PSO; particle swarm optimisation; DPSO; bio-inspired computation; sequencing; product design projects.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIC.2012.047181

International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation, 2012 Vol.4 No.2, pp.100 - 110

Received: 28 Sep 2011
Accepted: 22 Mar 2012

Published online: 22 Sep 2014 *

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