Deep Neural Networks for the Scheduling of Resource-Constrained Activity Sequences: A Preliminary Investigation

The scheduling of activity sequences under resource constraints, also known as Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP), is a well-known optimization problem that consists in finding an activity execution schedule that minimizes the total duration of the considered sequence. This problem is generally tackled with heuristic and meta-heuristic methods. This paper proposes a different approach based on artificial neural networks, used as decision tools, and machine learning. Moreover, it is shown that such methodology is able to provide good and fast activity execution schedules.