A Vibration Damping Optimization TO Maximize Net Present Value for Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem

Resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) aims to schedule at minimal duration a set of activities subject to precedence constraints and the limited availability of resources. Considering net present value (NPV) is one of the modern approaches in scheduling projects in which the project is scheduled in such a way that NPV be maximized. This approach with deterministic parameters such as activities duration was analyzed in the previous works. Since estimating the activities duration in exact manner is far from reality, we utilize an approximate estimation approach in scheduling project under fuzzy environment. In this respect, earliest start times and latest finish times for activities considered as fuzzy numbers. Since the problem is NP-hard problem, a novel meta-heuristic called vibration damping optimization (VDO) is proposed to solve the mathematical model. To demonstrate performance of proposed VDO, simulated anneling algorithm is applied. We also applied bi-directional scheduling method in order to generate neighborhoods. The result shows that the proposed VDO is capable to solve the model.