Augmenting priority rule heuristics with justification and rollout to solve the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (Q2482379)

This paper deals with the resource-constrained scheduling problem, where the start times for all activities have to be determined such that all precedence and resource constraints are satisfied and the makespan becomes minimal. After formulating this problem as a sequential decision problem, it is described how the ideas of rollout and priority rule heuristics with justification can be integrated into several solution algorithms. Moreover, an extensive computational comparison of the different rollout procedures is given. It turns out that the rollout procedures in combination with the priority rules and justification produce solutions of higher quality than in the case of using only priority rules with or without justification (but with higher computational cost) and that the rollout procedures are competitive with the best solution procedures described in the literature.