A generic enhanced search framework based on genetic algorithm: Case study on job shop scheduling problem

Abstract

Optimal allocation of production resources is an urgent need for the development of industrialization. Reasonable production scheduling algorithm and excellent scheduling scheme can efficiently plan production resources, reduce production costs and shorten order completion time. Genetic algorithm has become one of the most popular algorithms for solving job shop scheduling problem because of its simplicity, versatility and good robustness. However, the genetic algorithm for solving NP-hard problems such as job shop scheduling has the problem of falling into local optimum, which leads to the decrease of solution accuracy. This study focused on the problem and proposed a generic enhanced search framework based on genetic algorithm, which named niche adaptive genetic algorithm. The niche selection mechanism and adaptive genetic operators were used to enrich the diversity of population, balance the genetic probability and enhance the global search performance of the algorithm. The working mechanism of this algorithm is analysed by testing data, and the proposed algorithm was tested on job-shop scheduling problem instances. The results show that the performance of the proposed method is 0.79 percentage points higher than that of the standard genetic algorithm, and it has the ability to search for the global optimum.