Novel Genetic Bees Algorithm applied to single machine scheduling problem

Abstract

The proposed novel Genetic Bees Algorithm (GBA) is an enhancement to the swarm-based Bees Algorithm (BA). It is called the Genetic Bees Algorithm because it has genetic operators. The structure of the GBA compared to the basic BA has two extra components namely, a Reinforced Global Search and a Jumping Function. The main advantage of adding the genetic operators to BA is that it will help the algorithm to avoid getting stuck in local optima. In this study the scheduling problem of a single machine was considered. When the basic BA was applied to solve this problem its performance was affected by its weakness in conducting global search to explore the search space. However, in most cases the proposed GBA overcame this issue due to the two new components which have been introduced.