An estimation of distribution algorithm for lot-streaming flow shop problems with setup times

Lot-streaming flow shops have important applications in different industries including textile, plastic, chemical, semiconductor and many others. This paper considers an n-job m-machine lot-streaming flow shop scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times under both the idling and noidling production cases. The objective is to minimize the maximum completion time or makespan. To solve this important practical problem, a novel estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) is proposed with a job permutation based representation. In the proposed EDA, an efficient initialization scheme based on the NEH heuristic is presented to construct an initial population with a certain level of quality and diversity. An estimation of a probabilistic model is constructed to direct the algorithm search towards good solutions by taking into account both job permutation and similar blocks of jobs. A simple but effective local search is added to enhance the intensification capability. A diversity controlling mechanism is applied to maintain the diversity of the population. In addition, a speed-up method is presented to reduce the computational effort needed for the local search technique and the NEH-based heuristics. A comparative evaluation is carried out with the best performing algorithms from the literature. The results show that the proposed EDA is very effective in comparison after comprehensive computational and statistical analyses.This research is partially supported by the National Science Foundation of China (60874075, 70871065), and Science Foundation of Shandong Province in China under Grant BS2010DX005, and Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China under Grant 20100480897. Ruben Ruiz is partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, under the project "SMPA-Advanced Parallel Multiobjective Sequencing: Practical and Theoretical Advances" with reference DPI2008-03511/DPI and by the IMPIVA-Institute for the Small and Medium Valencian Enterprise, for the project OSC with references IMIDIC/2008/137, IMIDIC/2009/198 and IMIDIC/2010/175.Pan, Q.; Ruiz García, R. (2012). An estimation of distribution algorithm for lot-streaming flow shop problems with setup times. Omega. 40(2):166-180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2011.05.002S16618040

Comparative Analysis of Metaheuristic Approaches for Makespan Minimization for No Wait Flow Shop Scheduling Problem

This paper provides comparative analysis of various metaheuristic approaches for m-machine no wait flow shop scheduling (NWFSS) problem with makespan as an optimality criterion. NWFSS problem is NP hard and brute force method unable to find the solutions so approximate solutions are found with metaheuristic algorithms. The objective is to find out the scheduling sequence of jobs to minimize total completion time. In order to meet the objective criterion, existing metaheuristic techniques viz. Tabu Search (TS), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) are implemented for small and large sized problems and effectiveness of these techniques are measured with statistical metric

Production Scheduling

Generally speaking, scheduling is the procedure of mapping a set of tasks or jobs (studied objects) to a set of target resources efficiently. More specifically, as a part of a larger planning and scheduling process, production scheduling is essential for the proper functioning of a manufacturing enterprise. This book presents ten chapters divided into five sections. Section 1 discusses rescheduling strategies, policies, and methods for production scheduling. Section 2 presents two chapters about flow shop scheduling. Section 3 describes heuristic and metaheuristic methods for treating the scheduling problem in an efficient manner. In addition, two test cases are presented in Section 4. The first uses simulation, while the second shows a real implementation of a production scheduling system. Finally, Section 5 presents some modeling strategies for building production scheduling systems. This book will be of interest to those working in the decision-making branches of production, in various operational research areas, as well as computational methods design. People from a diverse background ranging from academia and research to those working in industry, can take advantage of this volume

A survey of scheduling problems with setup times or costs

Author name used in this publication: C. T. NgAuthor name used in this publication: T. C. E. Cheng2007-2008 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

Swarm intelligence for scheduling: a review

Swarm Intelligence generally refers to a problem-solving ability that emerges from the interaction of simple information-processing units. The concept of Swarm suggests multiplicity, distribution, stochasticity, randomness, and messiness. The concept of Intelligence suggests that problem-solving approach is successful considering learning, creativity, cognition capabilities. This paper introduces some of the theoretical foundations, the biological motivation and fundamental aspects of swarm intelligence based optimization techniques such Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Artificial Bees Colony (ABC) algorithms for scheduling optimization

Modelling and Scheduling Lot Streaming Flexible Flow Lines

Although lot streaming scheduling is an active research field, lot streaming flexible flow lines problems have received far less attention than classical flow shops. This paper deals with scheduling jobs in lot streaming flexible flow line problems. The paper mathematically formulates the problem by a mixed integer linear programming model. This model solves small instances to optimality. Moreover, a novel artificial bee colony optimization is developed. This algorithm utilizes five effective mechanisms to solve the problem. To evaluate the algorithm, it is compared with adaptation of four available algorithms. The statistical analyses showed that the proposed algorithm significantly outperformed the other tested algorithms

Makespan Minimization in Re-entrant Permutation Flow Shops

Re-entrant permutation flow shop problems occur in practical applications such as wafer manufacturing, paint shops, mold and die processes and textile industry. A re-entrant material flow means that the production jobs need to visit at least one working station multiple times. A comprehensive review gives an overview of the literature on re-entrant scheduling. The influence of missing operations received just little attention so far and splitting the jobs into sublots was not examined in re-entrant permutation flow shops before. The computational complexity of makespan minimization in re-entrant permutation flow shop problems requires heuristic solution approaches for large problem sizes. The problem provides promising structural properties for the application of a variable neighborhood search because of the repeated processing of jobs on several machines. Furthermore the different characteristics of lot streaming and their impact on the makespan of a schedule are examined in this thesis and the heuristic solution methods are adjusted to manage the problem’s extension

Lot streaming in hybrid flow shop scheduling

Production planning and scheduling play significant roles in manufacturing system operations and different techniques have been used to enhance their performance. Lot streaming has been studied for decades and is shown to accelerate production flow. This research deals with lot streaming in hybrid flow shops. Multiple products are processed in a multi-stage hybrid flow shop with non-identical machines. Sublots can be constant or consistent and intermingling is not allowed. Setups are attached and sequence independent. The problem is to simultaneously determine product sequence and sublots sizes so that the makespan is minimized. The model presented in this thesis is a mixed integer linear programming formulation for solving this problem. Several variations of the model are presented to incorporate different problem settings such as exploitation of variable sublots in the single product problem. Numerical examples are presented to validate the proposed model and to compare it to similar example problems in the literature. Furthermore, an example of a lot streaming problem in a general multi-stage hybrid flow shop is concerned and discussions and analysis are presented. Keywords . Production planning; Scheduling; Lot streaming; Hybrid flow shop; Integer programmin

An Enhanced Discrete Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm to Minimize the Total Flow Time in Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling with Limited Buffers

This paper presents an enhanced discrete artificial bee colony algorithm for minimizing the total flow time in the flow shop scheduling problem with buffer capacity. First, the solution in the algorithm is represented as discrete job permutation to directly convert to active schedule. Then, we present a simple and effective scheme called best insertion for the employed bee and onlooker bee and introduce a combined local search exploring both insertion and swap neighborhood. To validate the performance of the presented algorithm, a computational campaign is carried out on the Taillard benchmark instances, and computations and comparisons show that the proposed algorithm is not only capable of solving the benchmark set better than the existing discrete differential evolution algorithm and iterated greedy algorithm, but also capable of performing better than two recently proposed discrete artificial bee colony algorithms

An Enhanced Discrete Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm to Minimize the Total Flow Time in Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling with Limited Buffers

This paper presents an enhanced discrete artificial bee colony algorithm for minimizing the total flow time in the flow shop scheduling problem with buffer capacity. First, the solution in the algorithm is represented as discrete job permutation to directly convert to active schedule. Then, we present a simple and effective scheme called best insertion for the employed bee and onlooker bee and introduce a combined local search exploring both insertion and swap neighborhood. To validate the performance of the presented algorithm, a computational campaign is carried out on the Taillard benchmark instances, and computations and comparisons show that the proposed algorithm is not only capable of solving the benchmark set better than the existing discrete differential evolution algorithm and iterated greedy algorithm, but also capable of performing better than two recently proposed discrete artificial bee colony algorithms