A two-stage multi-operator differential evolution algorithm for solving Resource Constrained Project Scheduling problems

The Resource Constrained Project Scheduling problem (RCPSP) is a complex and combinatorial optimization problem mostly relates with project management, construction industries, production planning and manufacturing domains. Although several solution methods have been proposed, no single method has been shown to be the best. Further, optimal solution of this type of problem requires different requirements of the exploration and exploitation at different stages of the optimization process. Considering these requirements, in this paper, a two-stage multi-operator differential evolution (DE) algorithm, called TS-MODE, has been developed to solve RCPSP. TS-MODE starts with the exploration stage, and based on the diversity of population and the quality of solutions, this approach dynamically place more importance on the most-suitable DE, and then repeats the same process during the exploitation phase. A complete evaluation of the components and parameters of the algorithms by a Design of Experiments technique is also presented. A number of single-mode RCPSP data sets from the project scheduling library (PSPLIB) have been considered to test the effectiveness and performance of the proposed TS-MODE against selected recent well-known state-of-the-art algorithms. Those results reveal the efficiency and competitiveness of the proposed TS-MODE approach.