Project scheduling with limited resources using a genetic algorithm

This paper presents a genetic algorithm for the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP). In comparison with previous genetic algorithms proposed in literature for this problem, this paper proposes an alternative representation of the chromosomes using a multi-array object-oriented model in order to take advantage of programming features in most common languages for the design of decision support systems. The approach was tested on sets of standard problems taken from the literature and freely available on the Internet (PSPLIB). Computational results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and show that our procedure equals most of previous results with less computational time.