A blocking flow shop deteriorating scheduling problem via a hybrid chemical reaction optimization

Yaping Fu,Jihui Zhang,Zhenling Wang,Zhanzhong Wang

doi:10.1177/1687814017701371

Abstract

This study presents a blocking flow shop deteriorating scheduling problem which has a widespread application in manufacturing and service systems. In the investigated problem, there is no buffer between machines, and the actual processing time of jobs on each machine is described as a linear function of their starting time and normal processing time. In order to deal with this problem more efficiently, this study develops a hybrid chemical reaction optimization algorithm, where some special strategies are developed based on the problem characteristics, for example, solution representation, on-wall ineffective collision, decomposition, inter-molecule ineffective collision, and synthesis reactions. In addition, a variable neighborhood search is designed to strengthen the search ability of the chemical reaction optimization algorithm. Computational simulation experiments on a set of instances and performance comparisons are provided. They show that the proposed algorithm is superior to the standard chemical ...

Highlights

The flow shop deteriorating scheduling problem has been extensively studied in recent years,13–16 and it has been proven to be an nondeterministic polynomial (NP)-hard problem when there are more than two machines
The experimental results on t-test indicate that the Chemical reaction optimization (CRO)-variable neighborhood search (VNS) performs significantly better than standard CRO (SCRO) in eight test instances, and significantly better than genetic algorithm (GA) in all the test instances
This study presents the blocking flow shop deteriorating scheduling problem for the first time

Summary

Introduction

Flow shop scheduling is one of the most well-known and difficult combination optimization problems, and it has a widespread application in manufacturing systems, even in service systems. In recent years, it has gained an increasing concern from operational and industrial communities. As for the computational complexity, it has been proved that the flow shop scheduling problem with more than two machines is nondeterministic polynomial (NP)-hard in the strong sense. the flow shop scheduling problem has been extensively studied in the past few years.8–11In order to make the scheduling models more suitable for real-world manufacturing systems, Gupta and Gupta investigated a deteriorating scheduling model in a single machine case, where the processing time of jobs was an increasing function of their starting time.Since the deteriorating scheduling model can describe a scheduling problem more comprehensively, it has attracted much attention in manufacturing and service systems. Flow shop scheduling is one of the most well-known and difficult combination optimization problems, and it has a widespread application in manufacturing systems, even in service systems.. Flow shop scheduling is one of the most well-known and difficult combination optimization problems, and it has a widespread application in manufacturing systems, even in service systems.3,4 In recent years, it has gained an increasing concern from operational and industrial communities.. The flow shop deteriorating scheduling problem has been extensively studied in recent years, and it has been proven to be an NP-hard problem when there are more than two machines.. The blocking flow shop scheduling problem is one of the best known branches of the flow shop scheduling problem.18,19 It usually appears in the environment where the processed The flow shop deteriorating scheduling problem has been extensively studied in recent years, and it has been proven to be an NP-hard problem when there are more than two machines. The blocking flow shop scheduling problem is one of the best known branches of the flow shop scheduling problem. It usually appears in the environment where the processed

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Conclusion