Ant colony optimization for multi-objective flow shop scheduling problem

YAĞMAHAN B., YENİSEY M. M.

COMPUTERS & INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, vol.54, no.3, pp.411-420, 2008 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 54 Issue: 3
  • Publication Date: 2008
  • Doi Number: 10.1016/j.cie.2007.08.003
  • Journal Name: COMPUTERS & INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Page Numbers: pp.411-420
  • Keywords: flow shop, scheduling, multi-objective, ant colony optimization, M-MACHINE, N-JOB, ALGORITHM, SEARCH, SYSTEM
  • Bursa Uludag University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Flow shop scheduling problem consists of scheduling given jobs with same order at all machines. The job can be processed on at most one machine; meanwhile one machine can process at most one job. The most common objective for this problem is makespan. However, multi-objective approach for scheduling to reduce the total scheduling cost is important. Hence, in this study, we consider the flow shop scheduling problem with multi-objectives of makespan, total flow time and total machine idle time. Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is proposed to solve this problem which is known as NP-hard type. The proposed algorithm is compared with solution performance obtained by the existing multi-objective heuristics. As a result, computational results show that proposed algorithm is more effective and better than other methods compared. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.