A particle swarm optimization based hyper-heuristic algorithm for the classic resource constrained project scheduling problem

Abstract In this paper, we propose a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based hyper-heuristic algorithm for solving the resource constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to develop a PSO hyper-heuristic and apply to the classic RCPSP. The hyper-heuristic works as an upper-level algorithm that controls several low-level heuristics which operate to the solution space. The solution representation is based on random keys. Active schedules are constructed by the serial scheduling generation scheme using the priorities of the activities which are modified by the low-level heuristics of the algorithm. Also, the double justification operator, i.e. a forward–backward improvement procedure, is applied to all solutions. The proposed approach was tested on a set of standard problem instances of the well-known library PSPLIB and compared with other approaches from the literature. The promising computational results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.