An experimental analysis of solution performance in a resource sharing and scheduling problem

In this paper we study the performance of a branch and bound enumeration procedure in solving a comprehensive mixed-integer linear programming formulation of a resource-sharing and scheduling problem (RSSP). The formulation is monolithic and deterministic. Various independent factors of an RSSP generally influence the size of the problem. An experimental analysis is performed to examine how such factors influence performance. We found that the number of resources, the total number of modes allowed in the problem, and the average number of renewable resources used in the problem have significant influence on the computational time as well as other performance measures. In addition, some intermediate response variables are identified and additional insights regarding the influences of the independent factors on these variables are provided.