A Bee Colony Optimization Approach for Mixed Blocking Constraints Flow Shop Scheduling Problems

Vahid Riahi,Mostafa Khorramizadeh

doi:10.1155/2015/612604

Vahid Riahi, Mostafa Khorramizadeh

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/612604

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Abstract

The flow shop scheduling problems with mixed blocking constraints with minimization of makespan are investigated. The Taguchi orthogonal arrays and path relinking along with some efficient local search methods are used to develop a metaheuristic algorithm based on bee colony optimization. In order to compare the performance of the proposed algorithm, two well-known test problems are considered. Computational results show that the presented algorithm has comparative performance with well-known algorithms of the literature, especially for the large sized problems.

Highlights

Flow shop scheduling problem has been extensively studied for over 50 years because of its significance in both theory and industrial applications [1]
We propose a constructive heuristic for minimizing the makespan in flow shop scheduling problems with mixed blocking constraints
The first set of test problems is presented in Trabelsi et al [10], and the second set is given by Taillard [16]

Summary

Introduction

Flow shop scheduling problem has been extensively studied for over 50 years because of its significance in both theory and industrial applications [1]. In the blocking flow shop, because of the lack of intermediate buffer storage between consecutive machines, a job has to stay in the current machine until the machine is available for processing, even if it has completed processing in this machine [2] This increases the waiting time and influences the efficiency of production. Regarding RCb constraint, an integer linear programming model, lower bounds, and a metaheuristic are presented in [7] These problems have been solved in [8] by a metaheuristic algorithm. In [10], authors proposed some heuristic for the flow shop problem with RSb, RCb, and RCb∗ constraints and solved it with genetic algorithm. We propose a constructive heuristic for minimizing the makespan in flow shop scheduling problems with mixed blocking constraints.

Problem Description

Bee Colony Algorithm

Numerical Results

Conclusion