Hybrid estimation of distribution algorithm for permutation flowshop scheduling problem with sequence dependent family setup times

Abstract

This paper addresses to the scheduling in manufacturing cell environment with sequence dependent family setup times in a flow shop with respect to the makespan criterion. Since this is a NP-hard problem, we present an estimation of distribution algorithm as an evolutionary algorithm for solving it. In order to improve the quality of solution of our algorithm, we propose a hybridization with an iterated local search algorithm. The computational experiments show that our algorithm is better than the evolutionary algorithms proposed in the literature. Moreover, it seems able to provide good results in short computational time.