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A Decomposition-Based Heuristic For The Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem

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  • D. DEBELS

    ()

  • M. VANHOUCKE

    ()

Abstract

In the last few decades the resource-constrained project scheduling problem has become a popular problem type in operations research. However, due to its strongly NP-hard status, the effectiveness of exact optimisation procedures is restricted to relatively small instances. In this paper we present a new genetic algorithm (GA) for this problem, able to provide near-optimal heuristic solutions. This GA procedure has been extended by a so-called decomposition-based heuristic (DBH) which iteratively solves subparts of the project. We present computational experiments on two datasets. The first benchmark set is used to illustrate the contribution of both the GA and the DBH. The second set is used to compare the results with current state-of-the-art heuristics, and to show that the procedure is capable of producing consistently good results for challenging instances of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. We illustrate that GA is currently the best performing RCPSP meta-heuristic, and that the DBH further improves the performance of the GA

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration in its series Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium with number 05/293.

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Length: 29 pages
Date of creation: Feb 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:05/293

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Related research

Keywords: project scheduling; genetic algorithms; decomposition;

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References

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  1. Erik L. Demeulemeester & Willy S. Herroelen, 1997. "New Benchmark Results for the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(11), pages 1485-1492, November.
  2. Valls, Vicente & Quintanilla, Sacramento & Ballestin, Francisco, 2003. "Resource-constrained project scheduling: A critical activity reordering heuristic," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 149(2), pages 282-301, September.
  3. Kolisch, Rainer, 1996. "Serial and parallel resource-constrained project scheduling methods revisited: Theory and computation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 320-333, April.
  4. Kolisch, R. & Padman, R., 2001. "An integrated survey of deterministic project scheduling," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 249-272, June.
  5. Hartmann, Sonke & Kolisch, Rainer, 2000. "Experimental evaluation of state-of-the-art heuristics for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 127(2), pages 394-407, December.
  6. Hartmann, Sönke & Kolisch, R., 2000. "Experimental evaluation of state-of-the-art heuristics for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 11180, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
  7. Li, K. Y. & Willis, R. J., 1992. "An iterative scheduling technique for resource-constrained project scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 370-379, February.
  8. Demeulemeester, Erik & Herroelen, Willy, 1997. "New benchmark results for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem," Open Access publications from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven urn:hdl:123456789/101250, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
  9. Herroelen, Willy & De Reyck, B & Demeulemeester, Erik, 1998. "Resource-constrained project scheduling : A survey of recent developments," Open Access publications from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven urn:hdl:123456789/101588, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
  10. Kolisch, Rainer & Hartmann, Sönke, 1999. "Heuristic algorithms for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem: classification and computational analysis," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 10966, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
  11. Fleszar, Krzysztof & Hindi, Khalil S., 2004. "Solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem by a variable neighbourhood search," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 155(2), pages 402-413, June.
  12. Kolisch, Rainer & Padman, R., 2001. "An integrated survey of deterministic project scheduling," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 8114, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
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Cited by:
  1. D. Debels & M. Vanhoucke, 2006. "Meta-heuristic resource-constrained project scheduling:solution space restrictions and neighbourhood extensions," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 06/387, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

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