Hybrid of genetic algorithm and simulated annealing for multiple project scheduling with multiple resource constraints

Since scheduling of multiple projects is a complex and time-consuming task, a large number of heuristic rules have been proposed by researchers for such problems. However, each of these rules is usually appropriate for only one specific type of problem. In view of this, a hybrid of genetic algorithm and simulated annealing (GA-SA Hybrid) is proposed in this paper for generic multi-project scheduling problems with multiple resource constraints. The proposed GA-SA Hybrid is compared to the modified simulated annealing method (MSA), which is more powerful than genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated annealing (SA). As both GA and SA are generic search methods, the GA-SA Hybrid is also a generic search method. The random-search feature of GA, SA and GA-SA Hybrid makes them applicable to almost all kinds of optimization problems. In general, these methods are more effective than most heuristic rules. Three test projects and three real projects are presented to show the advantage of the proposed GA-SA Hybrid method. It can be seen that GA-SA Hybrid has better performance than GA, SA, MSA, and some most popular heuristic methods.