Minimal forbidden set based heuristics for resource-constrained project scheduling

Abstract

This paper presents a minimal forbidden set based heuristics for solving resource-constrained project scheduling problems (RCPSP) to minimize project makespan and maximize schedule robustness. The heuristics solves the RCPSP by adding disjunctive arcs into project networks to destroy minimal forbidden set, viz. resolve resource conflicts, so that the resulting networks are precedence and resource feasible. Four priority rules are applied in the heuristics, and they are evaluated by computational experiment citing two sets of instances from problem library PSPLIB. Computational results show that the presented heuristics can generate project schedules of short project makespan and high schedule robustness.