A Tabu Search Approach for the Resource Constrained Project Management Problem

An appropriate tabu search implementation is designed to solve the resource constrained project scheduling problem. This approach uses well defined move strategies and a structured neighbourhood, defines appropriate tabu status and tenure and takes account of objective function approximation to speed up the search process. A sound understanding of the problem has helped in many ways in designing and enhancing the tabu search methodology. The method uses diversification, intensification and handles infeasibility via strategic oscillation. The above methodology is tested on existing problems from the literature and also on parametrically generated problems with encouraging results. For comparison of results, optimal solutions are used in the former and lower bounds obtained by Lagrangian heuristics are used in the latter.