Title
A hybrid scatter search/electromagnetism meta-heuristic for project scheduling
Abstract
In the last few decades, several effective algorithms for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem have been proposed. However, the challenging nature of this problem, summarised in its strongly NP-hard status, restricts the effectiveness of exact optimisation to relatively small instances. In this paper, we present a new meta-heuristic for this problem, able to provide near-optimal heuristic solutions for relatively large instances. The procedure combines elements from scatter search, a generic population-based evolutionary search method, and from a recently introduced heuristic method for the optimisation of unconstrained continuous functions based on an analogy with electromagnetism theory. We present computational experiments on standard benchmark datasets, compare the results with current state-of-the-art heuristics, and show that the procedure is capable of producing consistently good results for challenging instances of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. We also demonstrate that the algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art existing heuristics.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.1016/j.ejor.2004.08.020
European Journal of Operational Research
Keywords
Field
DocType
Project scheduling,Heuristics,Scatter search,Electromagnetism
Population,Continuous function,Schedule (project management),Mathematical optimization,Heuristic,Scheduling (computing),Computer science,Electromagnetism,Heuristics,Project management
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
169
2
0377-2217
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
92
4.38
14
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Dieter Debels12179.98
Bert De Reyck254746.23
Roel Leus366343.29
M Vanhoucke491955.85