Hybrid Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for No-Wait Flow-Shop Scheduling Problem with Sequence-Dependent Setup Times and Release Dates

Abstract

This paper proposes an innovative hybrid estimation of distribution algorithm (HEDA) for the no-wait flow-shop scheduling problem (NFSSP) with sequence dependent setup times (SDSTs) and release dates (RDs) to minimize the total completion time (TCT), which has been proved to be typically NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem with strong engineering background. Firstly, a speed-up evaluation method is developed according to the property of NFSSP with SDSTs and RDs. Secondly, the genetic information both order of jobs and the promising blocks of jobs are concerned to generate the guided probabilistic model. Thirdly, after the HEDA based global exploration, a problem dependent local search is developed to emphasize exploitation. Due to the reasonable balance between HEDA based global search and problem-dependent local search as well as the comprehensive utilization of the speed-up evaluation, TCT-NFSSP with SDSTs and RDs can be solved effectively and efficiently. Computational results and comparisons demonstrate the superiority of HEDA in terms of searching quality, robustness, and efficiency.