In this paper, an Artificial Immune System (AIS) for the multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem (MRCPSP), in which multiple execution modes are available for each of the activities of the project, is presented. The AIS algorithm makes use of mechanisms which are inspired on...

The resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) has been extensively investigated during the past decades. Due to its strongly NP-hard status and the need for solving large realistic project instances, the recent focus has shifted from exact optimisation procedures to (meta-)...

The efficient and effective management of nursing personnel is of critical importance in a hospital’s environment comprising a vast share of the hospital’s operational costs. The nurse workforce management process highly affects the nurses’ working conditions which are strongly related to...

In this paper, we present a meta-heuristic algorithm for the well-known resource-constrained project scheduling problem with discounted cash flows. This optimization procedure maximizes the net present value of project subject to the precedence and renewable resource constraints. The problem is...

In this paper we introduce the concept of due date assignment in the project scheduling literature. Despite the fact that due date assignment problems belongs to the core of the machine scheduling literature, no attempts have been made to tackle this problem in a project scheduling environment....

We present a finite capacity production scheduling algorithm for an integrated steel company located in Belgium. This multiple-objective optimization model takes various casespecific constraints into account and consists of two steps. A machine assignment step determines the routing of an...

In this paper, we present a new genetic algorithm for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with discounted cash flows and investigate the trade-off between a project’s net present value and its corresponding lead time. We consider a problem formulation where the pre-specified...

The crew scheduling problem in the airline industry is extensively investigated in the operations research literature since efficient crew employment can drastically reduce operational costs of airline companies. Given the flight schedule of an airline company, crew scheduling is the process of...

In this paper, we present a novel meta-heuristic technique for the nurse scheduling problem (NSP). This well-known scheduling problem assigns nurses to shifts per day taking both hard and soft constraints into account. The objective is to maximize the preferences of the nurses and to minimize...

Recently, a new heuristic algorithm for global optimization has been proposed by Birbil and Fang (2003), referred to as Electromagnetism (EM). This technique is based on the electromagnetism theory of physics, and simulates attraction and repulsion of sample points in order to move towards an...