This paper considers two problem classes that are important to researchers as well as practitioners, namely packing and project scheduling problems. First, the two problem categories are described. This includes a classification of packing problems as well as of project scheduling concepts....

Resource-constrained project scheduling under a net present value objective attracts growing interest. Because this is an NP-hard problem, it is unlikely that optimum solutions can be computed for large instances. Thus, heuristics have become a popular research field. Up to now, however, tight...

This paper introduces a new general framework for genetic algorithms to solve a broad range of optimization problems. When designing a genetic algorithm, there may be several alternatives for a component such as crossover, mutation or decoding procedure, and it may be difficult to determine the...

Over the years numerous branch-and-bound procedures for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem have been developed. Enumerating delaying alternatives, extension alternatives, feasible posets, feasible sequences or feasible subsets, they all aim at finding as fast as possible...

Most scheduling problems are notoriously intractable, so the majority of algorithms for them are heuristic in nature. Priority rule-based methods still constitute the most important class of these heuristics. Of these, in turn, parameterized biased random sampling methods have attracted...

Most scheduling problems are notoriously intractable, so the majority of algorithms for them are heuristic in nature. Priority rule-based methods still constitute the most important class of these heuristics. Of these, in turn, parameterized biased random sampling methods have attracted...

The resource investment problem deals with the issue of providing resources to a project such that a given deadline can be met. The objective is to make the resources available in the cheapest possible way. For each resource, expenses depend on the maximum amount required during the course of...

For most computationally intractable problems there exists no heuristic which performs best on all instances. Usually, a heuristic characterized as best will perform good on the majority of instances but leave a minority on which other heuristics do better. In priority rule-based scheduling,...