Balancing Time and Cost in Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Using Meta-Heuristic Approach

Agricultural production involves a series of tasks including tillage, planting, and harvesting, which must be done at the right time for each region and type of product. Failing to complete these tasks on time can lead to a decrease in yield. Farmers may wrongly attribute this to factors such as infertile land, pests, diseases, and uneven rainfall distribution. However, this decrease in yield may not always be evident or tangible. To avoid such losses and unforeseen expenses, it is crucial to plan agricultural mechanization projects using the principles of project control. Agricultural projects, like industrial projects, must be carried out in the correct order and at the right time to achieve optimal results. Given the limited availability of resources for mechanization projects, it is imperative to meticulously plan activities to ensure that they are carried out on time and with maximum utilization of resources. To address these challenges, researchers have used meta-heuristic methods in project control, such as the colonial competition algorithm, which has been proven effective in solving the issue of scheduling projects with limited resources. The algorithm has been tested across various industrial activities and projects, and its performance in scheduling the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP) has been validated by researchers globally.

There is a scheduling issue regarding limited resources in agriculture, and this study presents a novel approach using the imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA). The algorithm not only explores a wider solution space but also strives to minimize deviation from the optimal solution, thereby improving the success rate of the proposed method. This research focuses on two dominant products, wheat and rapeseed, produced in Moghan Agriculture and Industry located in Northwest Iran. To evaluate the effectiveness of ICA, we compared it with other well-known meta-heuristic algorithms. We successfully resolved the problem of project scheduling problem with limited resources by implementing the imperialist competitive algorithm. Our findings have shown that this approach not only significantly increased efficiency but also outperformed other algorithms.

In this study, we assessed the efficiency of meta-heuristic methods in solving the RCPSP, which can be useful in optimizing the timeliness of project execution, especially for large-scale projects. Some meta-heuristic methods are only useful for smaller problems, while others can provide near-optimal solutions for larger problems, making them suitable for RCPSP. The algorithm explores a wide range of solutions and avoids premature convergence and getting stuck in local optima, unlike other algorithms such as the genetic algorithm. Optimization reduced the required budget and shortened the duration by 42 days for wheat and 25 days for rapeseed.

We utilized the colonial competition algorithm to address the RCPSP problem in agricultural mechanization projects for two agricultural products in Moghan. Our results show that the proposed algorithm converged and reached the optimal solution. The proposed algorithm was compared with other algorithms and it outperformed them.