A Heuristic Approach to Problems of Selecting Project

Abstract

This paper presents an approximation method, called "Space Method" for convenience' sake, to the integer-programming problems with 0-1 variables. The basic idea of this method is that, for each prokect, we make a scalar value as a sort of spacial volume by multiplying the amount used of limited resources. Then an index of profitability is assigned to each candidate project in the same way as the Effective Gradient Method (EGM). Two experiments are designed to investigate the properties of our method. In comparison with the primal EGM, our method is partially superior. However, the important finding is that these two approximation methods are mutually complemented.