Nima Nima - M.Sc., Faculty of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran
Amir Abbas Najafi - Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Seyed Taghi Akhavan Niaki - Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

This study aims to deal with a more realistic combined problem of project scheduling and material ordering. The goal is to minimize the total material holding and ordering costs by determining the starting time of activities along with material ordering schedules subject to some constraints. The problem is first mathematically modelled. Then a hybrid simulated annealing and genetic algorithm is proposed to solve it. In addition, some experiments are designed and the Taguchi method is employed to both tune the parameters of the proposed algorithm and to evaluate its performance. The results of the performance analysis show the efficiency of the proposed methodology.

Project scheduling; Material ordering; Hybrid simulated annealing;Taguchi design