Large-scale Job Shop Scheduling Problems Research Articles

Fully informed ABC algorithm for large scale job shop scheduling problem

The large-scale job-shop scheduling problem (LSJSSP) is a complex scheduling problem. Previously, although the nature-inspired algorithm, specially the swarm intelligence (SIA) based algorithms have been efficiently applied to solve the LSJSSP, finding the best solution for LSJSSP instances remains a challenging task. Therefore, in this paper, a novel SIA is applied to solve the 105 LSJSSP instances. The selected SIA is a fully informed artificial bee colony (FABC) algorithm. The FABC algorithm is a variant of the ABC algorithm in which the position update process is inspired from the GABC. In the FABC, the onlooker bee process of the ABC strategy is modified and designed such that the new position of the solution search agent is obtained while learning from all the nearby agents. The results obtained by the FABC are compared with the strategies available in the literature. The results analysis shows that the proposed approach to solving LSJSSP is competitive in the field of SIA.

Hybrid immune genetic algorithm with neighborhood search operator for the Job Shop Scheduling Problem

Immune genetic algorithm has the disadvantage of insufficient local search capability when solving the job-shop scheduling problem, and it is difficult to solve large-scale job-shop scheduling problems well. Aiming at this problem, this paper proposes a hybrid immune genetic algorithm which combines neighborhood search with immune genetic algorithm. After the genetic operation, in addition to the vaccination operation of the poorer individuals in the population, the better individuals will be selected for neighborhood search to improve the local search ability of the algorithm. The neighborhood search operator selects the N5 neighborhood search operator, which can perform a neighborhood search on key paths of high-quality individuals to find a better neighborhood solution. The experimental results show that the hybrid immune genetic algorithm with the neighborhood search method can obtain more standard case optimal solutions.

A decomposition heuristics based on multi-bottleneck machines for large-scale job shop scheduling problems

Design/methodology/approach: In the algorithm, a number of sub-problems are constructed by iteratively decomposing the large-scale JSP according to the process route of each job. And then the solution of the large-scale JSP can be obtained by iteratively solving the sub-problems. In order to improve the sub-problems' solving efficiency and the solution quality, a detection method for multi-bottleneck machines based on critical path is proposed. Therewith the unscheduled operations can be decomposed into bottleneck operations and non-bottleneck operations. According to the principle of “Bottleneck leads the performance of the whole manufacturing system” in TOC (Theory Of Constraints), the bottleneck operations are scheduled by genetic algorithm for high solution quality, and the non-bottleneck operations are scheduled by dispatching rules for the improvement of the solving efficiency.

A three-fold approach for job shop problems: A divide-and-integrate strategy with immune algorithm

This paper presents a novel divide-and-integrate strategy based approach for solving large scale job-shop scheduling problems. The proposed approach works in three phases. First, in contrast to traditional job-shop scheduling approaches where optimization algorithms are used directly regardless of problem size, priority rules are deployed to decrease problem scale. These priority rules are developed with slack due dates and mean processing time of jobs. Thereafter, immune algorithm is applied to solve each small individual scheduling module. In last phase, integration scheme is employed to amalgamate the small modules to get gross schedule with minimum makespan. This integration is carried out in dynamic fashion by continuously checking the preceding module's machine ideal time and feasible slots (satisfying all the constraint). In this way, the proposed approach will increase the machine utilization and decrease the makespan of gross schedule. Efficacy of the proposed approach has been tested with extremely hard standard test instances of job-shop scheduling problems. Implementation results clearly show effectiveness of the proposed approach.

A divide-and-conquer strategy with particle swarm optimization for the job shop scheduling problem

An optimization algorithm based on the ‘divide-and-conquer’ methodology is proposed for solving large job shop scheduling problems with the objective of minimizing total weighted tardiness. The algorithm adopts a non-iterative framework. It first searches for a promising decomposition policy for the operation set by using a simulated annealing procedure in which the solutions are evaluated with reference to the upper bound and the lower bound of the final objective value. Subproblems are then constructed according to the output decomposition policy and each subproblem is related to a subset of operations from the original operation set. Subsequently, all these subproblems are sequentially solved by a particle swarm optimization algorithm, which leads directly to a feasible solution to the original large-scale scheduling problem. Numerical computational experiments are carried out for both randomly generated test problems and the real-world production data from a large speed-reducer factory in China. Results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve satisfactory solution quality within reasonable computational time for large-scale job shop scheduling problems.

A hybrid approach to large-scale job shop scheduling

A decomposition based hybrid optimization algorithm is presented for large-scale job shop scheduling problems in which the total weighted tardiness must be minimized. In each iteration, a new subproblem is first defined by a simulated annealing approach and then solved using a genetic algorithm. We construct a fuzzy inference system to calculate the jobs' bottleneck characteristic values which depict the characteristic information in different optimization stages. This information is then utilized to guide the process of subproblem-solving in an immune mechanism in order to promote the optimization efficiency. Numerical computational results show that the proposed algorithm is effective for solving large-scale scheduling problems.

Modified bottleneck-based heuristic for large-scale job-shop scheduling problems with a single bottleneck

A modified bottleneck-based (MB) heuristic for large-scale job-shop scheduling problems with a welldefined bottleneck is suggested, which is simpler but more tailored than the shifting bottleneck (SB) procedure. In this algorithm, the bottleneck is first scheduled optimally while the non-bottleneck machines are subordinated around the solutions of the bottleneck schedule by some effective dispatching rules. Computational results indicate that the MB heuristic can achieve a better tradeoff between solution quality and computational time compared to SB procedure for medium-size problems. Furthermore, it can obtain a good solution in a short time for large-scale jobshop scheduling problems.

A prediction based iterative decomposition algorithm for scheduling large-scale job shops

In this paper, we present a prediction based iterative decomposition algorithm for solving large-scale job shop scheduling problems using the rolling horizon scheme and the prediction mechanism, in which the original large-scale scheduling problem is iteratively decomposed into several sub-problems. In the proposed algorithm, based on the job-clustering method, we construct the Global Scheduling Characteristics Prediction Model (GSCPM) to obtain the scheduling characteristics values, including the information of the bottleneck jobs and the predicted value of the global scheduling objective. Then, we adopt the above scheduling characteristics values to guide and coordinate the process of the problem decomposition and the sub-problem solving. Furthermore, we propose an adaptive genetic algorithm to solve each sub-problem. Numerical computational results show that the proposed algorithm is effective for large-scale scheduling problems.

A Job Shop Scheduling Heuristic Algorithm Based on Probabilistic Model of the Search Space

The job shop scheduling problem is an NP-hard problem and conveniently formulated as Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP). Research in CSP has produced variable and value ordering heuristics techniques that can help improve the efficiency of the basic backtrack search procedure. However, the popular variable and value ordering heuristics play poor in solving the large-scale job shop scheduling problem. In this paper, a new probabilistic model of the search space was introduced which allows to estimate the reliance of an operation on the availability of a reservation, and the degree of contention among unscheduled operations for the possession of a resource over some time interval. Based on this probabilistic model, new operation and reservation ordering heuristics were defined. new operation ordering heuristic selects the operation that relies most on the most contended resource/time interval, and new reservation ordering heuristic assigns to that operation the reservation which is expected to be compatible with the largest number of survivable job schedules. Computer simulations indicate that this new algorithm yields a optimal result of FT10 benchmark job shop scheduling problem under small time cost.

An approximate solution of machine scheduling problems by decomposition method

SUMMARY To obtain an approximate solution for a large-scale job-shop scheduling problem the decomposition method was investigated. This means that an original problem is decomposed into subproblems, which are solved separately, and then the solution of the original problem is composed from the subproblems' solutions. Different methods to decompose the problem were tested by computational experiments and evaluated from the viewpoint of the goodness of schedule and computation time.