- 2076 Chaitra · 2 marks
Resource leveling and smoothing
Short answer
Resource leveling reschedules activities to make daily resource demand uniform and within availability; it may delay activities beyond float and increase project duration. Resource smoothing adjusts only non-critical activities within float to reduce peaks without changing project duration.
Define resource leveling and smoothing.
Resource levelling is the rescheduling of activities so that the daily demand for a resource becomes as uniform as possible and does not exceed the amount available. Non-critical activities are first shifted within their float; if the demand still exceeds the limit, activities are delayed beyond their float, so the project duration may increase (resource-limited).
Resource smoothing is the adjustment of non-critical activities only within their float, to reduce the peaks and valleys of the resource histogram, without changing the project duration or the critical path (time-limited).
(Some textbooks use the term levelling for the time-limited case as well; the key difference is whether the project duration is held fixed.)
✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)
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