Distributed resource constrained multi-project scheduling problem with cooperative-game based negotiation mechanism

The distributed resource constrained multi-project scheduling problem (DRCMPSP) involves the individual scheduling of multiple projects and the coordination of shared resources among the projects. It is the crux of solving the DRCMPSP that designing an effective mechanism to obtain the necessary projects' information in order to coordinate the global resources. We constructed the hierarchical model with the global objective of optimizing the total delay cost of the multi-projects under the consideration of different unit project. And we designed a cooperative-game based negotiation mechanism to allocate the global resources and the hierarchical model was solved by the proposed phased evolution algorithm under the account of the information asymmetry in DRCMPSP and the self-interested project decision makers. According to the computational results of instances in MPSPLIB, it is effectively to decrease the total delay cost of the multi-projects that using the cooperative-game based negotiation mechanism and the approach is available to various problems with different sizes and utilization factors. In addition, in order to get low delay cost the autonomous agents should participate in the cooperative game and behave honestly and meanwhile a high-quality solution will be obtained.