Fuzzy resource-constrained project scheduling using taboo search algorithm

Abstract

This paper proposes a mathematical model to deal with project scheduling problem under vagueness and a framework of a heuristic approach to fuzzy resource-constrained project scheduling problem (F-RCPSP) using heuristic and metaheuristic scheduling methods. Our approach is very simple to apply, and it does not require knowing the explicit form of the membership functions of the fuzzy activity times. We first identify two typical activity priority rules, namely, resource over time and minimum slack priority rules. They are used in the F-RCPS problem and in the initial solution of Taboo search (TS) method. We improved the TS algorithm method for the solution of F-RCPSP. Our objective is to check the performance of these rules and metaheuristic method in minimizing the project completion time for the F-RCPS problems. In our study, we use trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (TraFNs) for activity times and activity-on-nodes (AON) representation and compute several project characteristics such as earliest, latest, and slack times in terms of TraFNs. The computational experiment shows that the performance of the proposed TS is better than the evaluation and light beam search algorithms in the literature. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.