A Multi-Agent Social Evolutionary Algorithm for Project Optimization Scheduling

A multi-agent social evolutionary algorithm for the precedence and resource constrained single-mode project optimization scheduling (RCPSP-MASEA) is proposed. RCPSP-MASEEA is used to obtain the optimal scheduling sequences so that the duration of the project is minimized. With the intrinsic properties of RCPSP in mind, the multi-agent systems, social acquaintance net and evolutionary algorithms are integrated to form a new algorithm. In this algorithm, all agents live in lattice-like environment. Making use of the designed behaviors, RCPSP-MASEA realizes the ability of agents to sense and act on the environment in which they live, and the local environments of all the agents are constructed by social acquaintance net. Based on the characteristics of project optimization scheduling, the encoding of solution, the operators such as competitive, crossover and self-learning are given. During the process of interacting with the environment and the other agents, each agent increases energy as much as possible, so that RCPSP-MASEA can find the optima. Through a thorough computational study for a standard set of project instances in PSPLIB, the performance of algorithm is analyzed. The experimental results show RCPSP-MASEA has a good performance and it can reach near-optimal solutions in reasonable times. Compared with other heuristic algorithms, RCPSP-MASEA also has some advantages.