A hybrid algorithm based on simplex search and differential evolution for resource-constrained project scheduling problem

Abstract

In this paper, an effective hybrid algorithm is proposed to solve the resource-constrained project scheduling problem by merging Nelder-Mead (NM) simplex method and differential evolution (DE). The individuals are encoded with the priority value based method and decoded by serial schedule generate scheme (SGS). Moreover, a reasonable framework is proposed to hybridize the simplex-based geometric search and the DE-based evolutionary search, and the simplex search is modified to further improve the quality of solutions obtained by DE. By interactively using the two methods with different mechanisms, the searching behavior can be enriched and the exploration and exploitation abilities can be well balanced. Simulation results based on some benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid algorithm. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.