An improved memetic algorithm for multi-objective resource-constrained flexible job shop inverse scheduling problem: An application for machining workshop

Abstract

Resource-constrained flexible job shop scheduling problems are commonly encountered in some manufacturing industries, and have been widely studied in recent years. However, traditional resource constrained flexible job shop scheduling problem rarely consider the uncertainties in actual manufacturing systems, which may make the original schedule become suboptimal or even unfeasible. Therefore, a resource constrained flexible job shop inverse scheduling problem (RCFJISP) is proposed in this paper, which aims to cope with uncertain events by simultaneously adjusting the machine, worker and process parameters of the original schedule. A multi-objective optimization model is constructed to minimize the makespan, worker cost, machine energy consumption and deviation index. Furthermore, an improved memetic algorithm (IMA) is developed for solving the proposed problem. In IMA, a novel double-layer encoding mechanism is designed to enhance the capacity in exploring new solution’s domains. Three initialization strategies utilizing original scheduling information are designed to improve the quality of initial solutions. An adaptive mutation strategy and a local search mechanism are designed to enhance exploration and exploitation ability of the algorithm. And a crowding operator is proposed to reflect the diversity of the population effectively. In computational experiments, 28 extended benchmarks are constructed, and the effectiveness of the proposed strategy and algorithm is verified by comparing IMA with its 4 variants and other 4 widely used algorithms. Finally, two inverse scheduling problems of a real-world hydraulic cylinder machining workshop under two uncertain situations are studied. The results demonstrate that IMA can effectively solve the actual inverse scheduling problem. With a slight adjustment to the original scheduling, it can reduce the makespan by 11.5%, the worker cost by 8.1% and the machine energy consumption by 27.9% on average.