A Meta heuristic method for Multi Mode Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem with Consideration of Time Value of Money

摘要

This paper presents a new model considering the negative cash flows in the activities of projects with the objective of maximizing the discounted cash flows. In this model, the activity can be done in several modes where the selection of a mode determines the completion time and the amount of resource consumption for that activity. Since Multi Mode Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem with Discounted Cash flows (MMRCPSPDC) is highly NP-hard, certain metaheuristic methods of Simulated Annealing (SA) and Tabu Search (TS) have been utilized as solution methods in this study. These two algorithms have proved to be effective in solving problems with positive cash flows. The method of bidirectional scheduling of activities, provided by Selle and Zimmerman [36] for RCPSPDC problem, has been applied to establish the initial solution, and the effect of using this algorithm [36] to improve the performance of SA and TS has been studied. Then, we compare the performance of the two methods of SA and TS in solving MMRCPSPDC when we have negative cash flows as well as positive ones.