Notes on the Problem of the Allocation of Resources to Activities in Discrete Quantities

Abstract

The simple resource allocation problem (also called the distribution of effort problem) is generalized by allowing more than one resource constraint. It is shown that the generalized problem can be reduced to the simple one if the coefficients in the objective function are all unity. In general, however, the problem seems to become much more difficult; the difficulty is evidenced by the failure of the incremental method which is valid for the simple problem, and the NP-hardness of the generalized problem.