An Approach Based on Earned Value Method to Solve the Problem of Minimizing the Total Costs of Earliness and Tardiness in Research and Development Projects

The costs of earliness and tardiness are considered as the major challenge of research and development projects. These projects need a more effective method for scheduling and control. Such methods help executives to properly detect the deviations of strategic projects from performance baseline and to adopt appropriate decisions about project activities. In this regard, the Earned Value Method (EVM) can be applied effectively. In this study, a scheduling algorithm is introduced to have high efficiency in minimizing the total earliness and tardiness costs. Practitioners can precisely predict the total time and cost of the project and also adopt appropriate decisions to prevent strategic projects from further financial losses using this technique. The execution of the proposed approach in real cases revealed that it lessens the total costs of earliness and tardiness. Furthermore, the efficiency of the proposed technique in solving the problem was compared to scheduling algorithms in previous studies. In this regard, the TTR index was used that represents the total earliness and tardiness time divided by the project time. The results showed that the proposed algorithm has higher efficiency in minimizing the total costs of earliness and tardiness in research and development projects.