A two-stage genetic programming framework for Stochastic Resource Constrained Multi-Project Scheduling Problem under New Project Insertions

This study proposes a novel hyper-heuristic based two-stage genetic programming framework (HH-TGP) to solve the Stochastic Resource Constrained Multi-Project Scheduling Problem under New Project Insertions (SRCMPSP-NPI). It divides the evolution of genetic programming into generation and selection stages, and then establishes a multi-state combination scheduling mode with multiple priority rules (PRs) for the first time to realize resource constrained project scheduling under both stochastic activity duration and new project insertion. In the generation stage, based on a modified attribute set for multi-project scheduling, NSGA-II is hybridized to evolve a non-dominated PR set for forming a selectable PR set. While in the selection stage, the whole decision-making process is divided into multiple states based on the completion activity duration, and a weighted normalized evolution process with two crossovers, two mutations and four local search operators to match the optimal PR for each state from the PR set. Under the existing benchmark, HH-TGP is compared with the existing methods to verify its effectiveness. • A hyper-heuristic based two-stage GP framework is proposed to solve the SRCMPSP-NPI. • NSGA-II is integrated to produce a non-dominated PR set in generation stage. • Multi-state PR combination scheduling is proposed to break the fixed PR usage in selection stage. • The basic and evolution components of existing hyper-heuristic project scheduling are improved.