Title: A new fuzzy multi-objective multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling model

Authors: Seyed Mojtaba Sajadi; Parham Azimi; Arman Ghamginzadeh; Ayub Rahimzadeh

Addresses: Faculty of Entrepreneurship, University of Tehran, Farshi Moghadam, 16 St., North Kargar Ave., Tehran, Iran ' Faculty of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran

Abstract: In this paper, a new model is developed to address the so-called multi-objective multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem under uncertainty conditions in the problem parameters. The two objective functions are minimising the project NPV and the project makespan, which is the first contribution of the current research. The proposed model is much more realistic one in comparison to previously developed model. This approach explicitly considers the risk acceptance level and the optimism of the project managers in the final decision, which are the main contributions of the current research. To show the efficiency of the proposed model in real applications, an efficient metaheuristic method based on memetic algorithm and cuckoo optimisation algorithm is developed to solve this problem, which is in fact, the second contribution of the paper. The algorithm embeds the cuckoo optimisation algorithm as a powerful local search method inside the genetic algorithm to improve its performance. To test the algorithm performance, a number of test problems from PSPLIB library were taken and then the proposed algorithm and the famous NSGA-II were examined over these problems, separately. The results were compared according to three different criteria. Computational results show that the proposed memetic-cuckoo algorithm is more efficient than the NSGA-II according to three different comparison criteria.

Keywords: resource-constrained project scheduling problem; RCPSP; cuckoo algorithm; fuzzy logic.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMOR.2017.085379

International Journal of Mathematics in Operational Research, 2017 Vol.11 No.1, pp.45 - 66

Received: 15 Aug 2015
Accepted: 03 Oct 2015
Published online: 25 Jul 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article