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Main Authors: Tian, Yuan, Mei, Yi, Zhang, Mengjie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14485
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author Tian, Yuan
Mei, Yi
Zhang, Mengjie
author_facet Tian, Yuan
Mei, Yi
Zhang, Mengjie
contents The dynamic multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem is a challenging scheduling problem that requires making decisions on both the execution order of activities and their corresponding execution modes. Genetic programming has been widely applied as a hyper-heuristic to evolve priority rules that guide the selection of activity-mode pairs from the current eligible set. Recently, an activity group selection strategy has been proposed to select a subset of activities rather than a single activity at each decision point, allowing for more effective scheduling by considering the interdependence between activities. Although effective in small-scale instances, this strategy suffers from scalability issues when applied to larger problems. In this work, we enhance the scalability of the group selection strategy by introducing a knee-point-based selection mechanism to identify a promising subset of activities before evaluating their combinations. An activity ordering rule is first used to rank all eligible activity-mode pairs, followed by a knee point selection to find the promising pairs. Then, a group selection rule selects the best activity combination. We develop a multi-tree GP framework to evolve both types of rules simultaneously. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach scales well to large instances and outperforms GP with sequential decision-making in most scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_14485
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Scalable Knee-Point Guided Activity Group Selection in Multi-Tree Genetic Programming for Dynamic Multi-Mode Project Scheduling
Tian, Yuan
Mei, Yi
Zhang, Mengjie
Artificial Intelligence
The dynamic multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem is a challenging scheduling problem that requires making decisions on both the execution order of activities and their corresponding execution modes. Genetic programming has been widely applied as a hyper-heuristic to evolve priority rules that guide the selection of activity-mode pairs from the current eligible set. Recently, an activity group selection strategy has been proposed to select a subset of activities rather than a single activity at each decision point, allowing for more effective scheduling by considering the interdependence between activities. Although effective in small-scale instances, this strategy suffers from scalability issues when applied to larger problems. In this work, we enhance the scalability of the group selection strategy by introducing a knee-point-based selection mechanism to identify a promising subset of activities before evaluating their combinations. An activity ordering rule is first used to rank all eligible activity-mode pairs, followed by a knee point selection to find the promising pairs. Then, a group selection rule selects the best activity combination. We develop a multi-tree GP framework to evolve both types of rules simultaneously. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach scales well to large instances and outperforms GP with sequential decision-making in most scenarios.
title Scalable Knee-Point Guided Activity Group Selection in Multi-Tree Genetic Programming for Dynamic Multi-Mode Project Scheduling
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14485