A task-member assignment model for complex engineering projects

Abstract

Complex projects with large number of tasks usually require expertise from various functional departments. While the use of teams has become a common way in industry, the assignment of people to teams and tasks is an important step during the planning stage of a project. If a project does not have effective teams to work on it, the lack of communication and cooperation among team members could seriously delay the project completion. The objective of this paper is to develop a task-member assignment model for complex projects using genetic algorithm (GA). Three important team member characteristics (i.e. multifunctional knowledge, teamwork capabilities and working relationship) with quantifiable measures and each member’s workload schedule are used in the model for task-member assignments, so that the right team member will be selected for the right task at the right time. The effectiveness of the research model is demonstrated by a 27- task engineering project.