A differential evolution algorithm for resource investment problem with tardiness

In this paper, we propose a differential evolution algorithm to solve the resource investment problem (RIP) with tardiness, which is one class of project scheduling problems. The tardiness of a project is allowed with defined penalty. We adapt a self-adaptive differential evolution algorithm combined with a local search operator to solve this problem. The performance of this algorithm is evaluated using 450 problem instances. The results show that these instances can reach their optimal solutions in a fixed number of schedules evaluated. The experimental results are quite satisfactory.