A multi-objective metaheuristic for the multi-skill resource-constrained project scheduling with heterogeneous efficiencies and resource costs

L. Antón Sánchez, J. Alcaraz, S. Rodríguez Ballesteros

This work studies an extended version of the multi-skill resource-constrained project scheduling problem that considers multiple resource efficiency rates and both fixed and skill-dependent variable costs, reflecting real project settings. The goal is to determine activity start times and assign (resource, skill) pairs to minimize the makespan while considering costs. As higher-skilled resources often incur higher costs, time and cost become conflicting objectives, leading to a multi-objective framework. Exact methods are computationally impractical even for small and medium instances. To address this, we propose a multi-objective metaheuristic with a novel encoding and tailored crossover and mutation operators that exploit problem knowledge. Computational results show that, for small and medium instances, the proposed method significantly outperforms exact approaches in runtime while achieving comparable solution quality, and it is the only practical option for large-scale problems.

Keywords: Multi-skill resource-constrained, Efficiency heterogeneity, Multi-objective metaheuristic

GT Heurísticas y metaheurísticas I
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