Finding Pure Nash Equilibrium for the Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem

Authors

  • Guillermo De Ita Luna Universidad Autonoma de Puebla
  • Fernando Zacarias Flores Universidad Autonoma de Puebla
  • Luis Carlos Altamirano Robles Universidad Autonoma de Puebla

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13053/cys-19-1-1921

Keywords:

Intelligent agents, congestion network, pure Nash equilibrium, RCPS problem, multi-scheduling, greedy heuristic NEH

Abstract

The paper focuses on solving the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling (RCPS) problem witha method based on intelligent agents. Parallelism forperforming the tasks is allowed. Common and limitedresources are available to all agents. The agents arenon-cooperative and compete with each other for theuse of common resources, thereby forming instances ofRCPS problem. We analyze the global joint interaction ofscheduling via a congestion network and seek to arriveat stable assignments of scheduling. For this class ofnetwork, stable assignments of scheduling correspondto a pure Nash equilibrium, and we show that in this casethere is a guarantee of obtaining a pure Nash equilibriumin polynomial time complexity. The pure Nash equilibriumpoint for this congestion network will be a localoptimum in the neighborhood structure of the projects,where no project can improve its completion time withoutnegatively affecting the completion time of the totalsystem. In our case, each state of the neighborhoodrepresents an instance of the RCPS problem, and forsolving such problem, we apply a novel greedy heuristic.It has a polynomial time complexity and works similar tothe well-knowing heuristic NEH.

Author Biographies

Guillermo De Ita Luna, Universidad Autonoma de Puebla

He did his BS in Computer Science in the Faculty of Computer Sciences in the Autonomus University of Puebla (BUAP), M\'exico. The master and Ph. D. Program in Electrical Engineering in the Cinvestav - I.P.N., M\'exico. He has worked by 10 years as developer and consulter for Database Systems and Geographic Information Systems for different enterprises in M\'exico. He has done research stays in Chicago University, Texas A\&M, INAOEP - Puebla and recently (2009) in the INRIA Institute in Lille - France.

Fernando Zacarias Flores, Universidad Autonoma de Puebla

He is researcher and professor of computer science at the Autonomus University of Puebla. He is a researcher in practical and theoretical computer science and mobile technologies and has conducted R&D projects in this area since 2000.

Luis Carlos Altamirano Robles, Universidad Autonoma de Puebla

He received the BS in Computer Science and the Master Degree in Computer Science from the Autonomus University of Puebla, M\'exico, and his PhD in Computer Science from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (I.P.N.), M\'exico. Currently, he is a member at the BUAP, and coordinator of its postgraduate section of the Computer Science Faculty.

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Published

2015-03-27

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 1 (2015): 19(1) January-March 2015

Section

Articles

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