Hybrid exact method for resource constrained project scheduling problem

A number of exact scheduling schemes incorporating various solution techniques such as branch and bound and dynamic programming exist for solving the well known resource constrained project scheduling problem. In this paper we report on a hybrid method which prominently depends on a branch and bound with a look-ahead mechanism as well as a genetic algorithm. Minimal delay set, core time, left shift are among the pruning rules used to prune inferior nodes of the enumeration tree. The proposed method has been verified and validated using a standard set of test problems with 30-120 requiring between 1-6 resource types each. The capability and applicability of the proposed method is demonstrated using standard problem instances