An improved ant colony optimization algorithm for nonlinear resource‐leveling problems

The notion of using a meta‐heuristic approach to solve nonlinear resource‐leveling problems has been intensively studied in recent years. Premature convergence and poor exploitation are the main obstacles for the heuristic algorithms. Analyzing the characteristics of the project topology network, this paper introduces a directional ant colony optimization (DACO) algorithm for solving nonlinear resource‐leveling problems. The DACO algorithm introduced can efficiently improve the convergence rate and the quality of solution for real‐project scheduling.