An efficient meta-heuristic algorithm for project scheduling with multiple modes

In this paper, a Fully Informed Particle Swarm (FIPS) algorithm is proposed for solving the Multi-mode Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (MRCPSP) with minimization of project makespan as the objective subject to resource and precedence constraints. In the proposed FIPS, A random key and the related mode list (ML) representation scheme are used as encoding schemes and the multi-mode serial schedule generation scheme (MSSGS) is considered as the decoding procedure. In particular, a new fitness function which reduces the average deviation from optimality and CPU-time is presented. Comparing the results of the proposed FIPS with other approaches using the well-known benchmark sets in PSPLIB validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm to solve the MRCPSP.