Hybrid artificial immune system and extremal optimization algorithm for permutation flowshop scheduling problem

The permutation flowshop scheduling problem （PFSP） is one of the most well-known and well-studied production scheduling problems with strong industrial background. This paper presents a new hybrid optimization algorithm which combines the strong global search ability of artificial immune system （AIS） with a strong local search ability of extremal optimization （EO） algorithm. The proposed algorithm is applied to a set of benchmark problems with a makespan criterion. Performance of the algorithm is evaluated. Comparison results indicate that this new method is an effective and competitive approach to the PFSP.

A Genetic Algorithm for the Flowshop Scheduling Problem

The flowshop scheduling problem is NP complete. To solve it by genetic algorithm, an efficient crossover operator is designed. Compared with another crossover operator, this one often finds a better solution within the same time.

A Heuristic for Two-Stage No-Wait Hybrid Flowshop Scheduling with a Single Machine in Either Stage

This paper studies the hybrid flow-shop scheduling problem with no-wait restrictions. The production process consists of two machine centers, one has a single machine and the other has more than one parallel machine. A greedy heuristic named least deviation algorithm is designed and its worst case performance is analyzed. Computational results are also given to show the algorithm's average performance compared with some other algorithms. The least deviation algorithm outperforms the others in most cases tested here, and it is of low computational complexity and is easy to carry out,thus it is of favorable application value.

A HYBRID APPROACH FOR MINIMIZING MAKESPAN IN PERMUTATION FLOWSHOP SCHEDULING

This work proposes a hybrid approach for solving traditional flowshop scheduling problems to reduce the makespan （total completion time）. To solve scheduling problems, a combination of Decision Tree （DT） and Scatter Search （SS） algorithms are used. Initially, the DT is used to generate a seed solution which is then given input to the SS to obtain optimal / near optimal solutions of makespan. The DT used the entropy function to convert the given problem into a tree structured format / set of rules. The SS provides an extensive investigation of the search space through diversification. The advantages of both DT and SS are used to form a hybrid approach. The proposed algorithm is tested with various benchmark datasets available for flowshop scheduling. The statistical results prove that the proposed method is competent and efficient for solving flowshop problems.

Hybrid Flowshop Scheduling with Interstage Job Transportation

There are a variety of joint job production and transportation scheduling problems that arise in modern manufacturing systems.In this paper,we study one of such problems that arises in a flowshop environment where there are two processing stages and a single transporter that is available to deliver the finished jobs from the first stage to the second.There is a single machine in the first stage and two parallel machines in the second stage.The transporter can carry only one job in each shipment.Each job is first processed on the single machine at stage one,then transported to and processed on one of the two parallel machines at stage two.The objective is to minimize the makespan,i.e.,the completion time of the last job in the second stage.Since this problem is strongly NP-hard,we propose a fast heuristic and show that the heuristic has a worst-case bound of 5/2.We also conduct1 numerical experiments to evaluate the average performance of this heuristic.

An improved artificial bee colony algorithm for steelmaking–refining–continuous casting scheduling problem

Steelmaking–refining–Continuous Casting(SCC) scheduling is a worldwide problem, which is NP-hard. Effective SCC scheduling algorithms can help to enhance productivity, and thus make significant monetary savings. This paper develops an Improved Artificial Bee Colony(IABC) algorithm for the SCC scheduling. In the proposed IABC, charge permutation is employed to represent the solutions. In the population initialization, several solutions with certain quality are produced by a heuristic while others are generated randomly. Two variable neighborhood search neighborhood operators are devised to generate new high-quality solutions for the employed bee and onlooker bee phases, respectively. Meanwhile, in order to enhance the exploitation ability, a control parameter is introduced to conduct the search of onlooker bee phase. Moreover, to enhance the exploration ability,the new generated solutions are accepted with a control acceptance criterion. In the scout bee phase, the solution corresponding to a scout bee is updated by performing three swap operators and three insert operators with equal probability. Computational comparisons against several recent algorithms and a state-of-the-art SCC scheduling algorithm have demonstrated the strength and superiority of the IABC.

Discrete Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Lot-streaming Flowshop with Total Flowtime Minimization

Unlike a traditional flowshop problem where a job is assumed to be indivisible, in the lot-streaming flowshop problem, a job is allowed to overlap its operations between successive machines by splitting it into a number of smaller sub-lots and moving the completed portion of the sub-lots to downstream machine. In this way, the production is accelerated. This paper presents a discrete artificial bee colony （DABC） algorithm for a lot-streaming flowshop scheduling problem with total flowtime criterion. Unlike the basic ABC algorithm, the proposed DABC algorithm represents a solution as a discrete job permutation. An efficient initialization scheme based on the extended Nawaz-Enscore-Ham heuristic is utilized to produce an initial population with a certain level of quality and diversity. Employed and onlooker bees generate new solutions in their neighborhood, whereas scout bees generate new solutions by performing insert operator and swap operator to the best solution found so far. Moreover, a simple but effective local search is embedded in the algorithm to enhance local exploitation capability. A comparative experiment is carried out with the existing discrete particle swarm optimization, hybrid genetic algorithm, threshold accepting, simulated annealing and ant colony optimization algorithms based on a total of 160 randomly generated instances. The experimental results show that the proposed DABC algorithm is quite effective for the lot-streaming flowshop with total flowtime criterion in terms of searching quality, robustness and effectiveness. This research provides the references to the optimization research on lot-streaming flowshop.

A TWO-STAGE SEMI-HYBRID FLOWSHOP PROBLEM IN GRAPHICS PROCESSING

In this paper,a two-stage semi-hybrid flowshop problem which appears in graphics processing is studied. For this problem, there are two machines M1 and M2, and a set of independent jobs J= {J1 ,J2 ,…,Jn }. Each Ji consists of two tasks Ai and Bi ,and task Ai must be completed before task Bi can start. Furthermore ,task Ai can be processed on M1 for ai time units ,or on Mw for ai^J time units ,while task Bi can only be processed on M2 for bi time units. Jobs and machines are available at time zero and no preemption is allowed. The objective is to minimize the maximum job completion time. It is showed that this problem is NP-hard. And a pseudo-polynomial time optimal algorithm is presented. A polynomial time approximation algorithm with worst-case ratio 2 is also presented.

Multi-objective reconfigurable production line scheduling for smart home appliances

In a typical discrete manufacturing process,a new type of reconfigurable production line is introduced,which aims to help small-and mid-size enterprises to improve machine utilization and reduce production cost.In order to effectively handle the production scheduling problem for the manufacturing system,an improved multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm based on Brownian motion(MOPSO-BM)is proposed.Since the existing MOPSO algorithms are easily stuck in the local optimum,the global search ability of the proposed method is enhanced based on the random motion mechanism of the BM.To further strengthen the global search capacity,a strategy of fitting the inertia weight with the piecewise Gaussian cumulative distribution function(GCDF)is included,which helps to maintain an excellent convergence rate of the algorithm.Based on the commonly used indicators generational distance(GD)and hypervolume(HV),we compare the MOPSO-BM with several other latest algorithms on the benchmark functions,and it shows a better overall performance.Furthermore,for a real reconfigurable production line of smart home appliances,three algorithms,namely non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II(NSGA-II),decomposition-based MOPSO(dMOPSO)and MOPSO-BM,are applied to tackle the scheduling problem.It is demonstrated that MOPSO-BM outperforms the others in terms of convergence rate and quality of solutions.

Improved Fruit Fly Optimization Algorithm for Solving Lot-Streaming Flow-Shop Scheduling Problem

An improved fruit fly optimization algorithm( iFOA) is proposed for solving the lot-streaming flow-shop scheduling problem( LSFSP) with equal-size sub-lots. In the proposed iFOA,a solution is encoded as two vectors to determine the splitting of jobs and the sequence of the sub-lots simultaneously. Based on the encoding scheme,three kinds of neighborhoods are developed for generating new solutions. To well balance the exploitation and exploration,two main search procedures are designed within the evolutionary search framework of the iFOA,including the neighborhood-based search( smell-vision-based search) and the global cooperation-based search. Finally,numerical testing results are provided,and the comparisons demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed iFOA for solving the LSFSP.