Improved Meta-Heuristics for Solving Distributed Lot-Streaming Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling Problems

Abstract

This paper addresses a distributed lot-streaming permutation flow shop scheduling problem that has various applications in real-life manufacturing systems. We aim to optimally assign jobs to multiple distributed factories and sequence them to minimize the maximum completion time (Makespan). A mathematic model is first developed to describe the considered problem. Then, five meta-heuristics are executed to solve it, including particle swarm optimization, genetic algorithm, harmony search, artificial bee colony, and Jaya algorithm. To improve the performance of these meta-heuristics, we employ Nawaz-Enscore-Ham (NEH) heuristic to initialize populations and propose improved strategies based on the problem’s feature. Finally, experiments are carried out based on 120 instances. The performance of improved strategies is verified. Comparisons and discussions show that the artificial bee colony algorithm with improved strategies has the best competitiveness for solving the proposed problem with makespan criteria. Note to Practitioners—In contemporary manufacturing industry, the traditional single-factory environment is being replaced by a distributed multi-factory environment, as a distributed pattern can effectively improve the production efficiency through the reasonable resource allocation strategies. The distributed lot-streaming permutation flow shop scheduling problem in such a pattern is of significance to practitioners. Although intelligent optimization can provide an effective tool to solve such problems, most of the algorithms are parameter-sensitive. A challenge for engineers is parameter selection, which greatly impacts the algorithm performance. To ensure the robustness of the algorithms, we develop five improved meta-heuristics by employing some strategies. Furthermore, parameter setting test is carried out to select the appropriate parameter values. As a result, the proposed algorithms can obtain resource allocation schemes with high-quality. It is shown that the artificial bee colony algorithm with improved strategies outperforms other algorithms well. The proposed methodology can be readily applied to real distributed scheduling problems.