A hybrid CFGTSA based approach for scheduling problem: a case study of an automobile industry

In the global competitive world swift, reliable and cost effective production subject to uncertain situations, through an appropriate management of the available resources, has turned out to be the necessity for surviving in the market. This inspired the development of the more efficient and robust methods to counteract the existing complexities prevailing in the market. The present paper proposes a hybrid CFGTSA algorithm inheriting the salient features of GA, TS, SA, and chaotic theory to solve the complex scheduling problems commonly faced by most of the manufacturing industries. The proposed CFGTSA algorithm has been tested on a scheduling problem of an automobile industry, and its efficacy has been shown by comparing the results with GA, SA, TS, GTS, and hybrid TSA algorithms

INTEGRATED APPROACH OF SCHEDULING A FLEXIBLE JOB SHOP USING ENHANCED FIREFLY AND HYBRID FLOWER POLLINATION ALGORITHMS

Manufacturing industries are undergoing tremendous transformation due to Industry 4.0. Flexibility, consumer demands, product customization, high product quality, and reduced delivery times are mandatory for the survival of a manufacturing plant, for which scheduling plays a major role. A job shop problem modified with flexibility is called flexible job shop scheduling. It is an integral part of smart manufacturing. This study aims to optimize scheduling using an integrated approach, where assigning machines and their routing are concurrently performed. Two hybrid methods have been proposed: 1) The Hybrid Adaptive Firefly Algorithm (HAdFA) and 2) Hybrid Flower Pollination Algorithm (HFPA). To address the premature convergence problem inherent in the classic firefly algorithm, the proposed HAdFA employs two novel adaptive strategies: employing an adaptive randomization parameter (α), which dynamically modifies at each step, and Gray relational analysis updates firefly at each step, thereby maintaining a balance between diversification and intensification. HFPA is inspired by the pollination strategy of flowers. Additionally, both HAdFA and HFPA are incorporated with a local search technique of enhanced simulated annealing to accelerate the algorithm and prevent local optima entrapment. Tests on standard benchmark cases have been performed to demonstrate the proposed algorithm’s efficacy. The proposed HAdFA surpasses the performance of the HFPA and other metaheuristics found in the literature. A case study was conducted to further authenticate the efficiency of our algorithm. Our algorithm significantly improves convergence speed and enables the exploration of a large number of rich optimal solutions.

Optimization Algorithms in Project Scheduling

Scheduling, or planning in a general perspective, is the backbone of project management; thus, the successful implementation of project scheduling is a key factor to projects’ success. Due to its complexity and challenging nature, scheduling has become one of the most famous research topics within the operational research context, and it has been widely researched in practical applications within various industries, especially manufacturing, construction, and computer engineering. Accordingly, the literature is rich with many implementations of different optimization algorithms and their extensions within the project scheduling problem (PSP) analysis field. This study is intended to exhibit the general modelling of the PSP, and to survey the implementations of various optimization algorithms adopted for solving the different types of the PSP

An Enhanced Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for Energy-Efficient Job-Shop Scheduling Problems with Transportation Constraints

[EN] Nowadays, the manufacturing industry faces the challenge of reducing energy consumption and the associated environmental impacts. Production scheduling is an effective approach for energy-savings management. During the entire workshop production process, both the processing and transportation operations consume large amounts of energy. To reduce energy consumption, an energy-efficient job-shop scheduling problem (EJSP) with transportation constraints was proposed in this paper. First, a mixed-integer programming model was established to minimize both the comprehensive energy consumption and makespan in the EJSP. Then, an enhanced estimation of distribution algorithm (EEDA) was developed to solve the problem. In the proposed algorithm, an estimation of distribution algorithm was employed to perform the global search and an improved simulated annealing algorithm was designed to perform the local search. Finally, numerical experiments were implemented to analyze the performance of the EEDA. The results showed that the EEDA is a promising approach and that it can solve EJSP effectively and efficiently.This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (No. 17KJB460018), the Innovation Foundation for Science and Technology of Yangzhou University (No. 2016CXJ020 and No. 2017CXJ018), Science and Technology Project of Yangzhou under (No. YZ2017278), Research Topics of Teaching Reform of Yangzhou University under (No. YZUJX2018-28B), and the Spanish Government (No. TIN2016-80856-R and No. TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R).Dai, M.; Zhang, Z.; Giret Boggino, AS.; Salido, MA. (2019). An Enhanced Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for Energy-Efficient Job-Shop Scheduling Problems with Transportation Constraints. Sustainability. 11(11):1-23. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11113085S1231111Wu, X., & Sun, Y. (2018). 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An Effective Multi-Population Based Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for Job Shop Scheduling Problem

The job shop scheduling problem is a well known practical planning problem in the manufacturing sector. We have considered the JSSP with an objective of minimizing makespan. In this paper, a multi-population based hybrid genetic algorithm is developed for solving the JSSP. The population is divided in several groups at first and the hybrid algorithm is applied to the disjoint groups. Then the migration operator is used. The proposed approach, MP-HGA, have been compared with other algorithms for job-shop scheduling and evaluated with satisfactory results on a set of JSSPs derived from classical job-shop scheduling benchmarks. We have solved 15 benchmark problems and compared results obtained with a number of algorithms established in the literature. The experimental results show that MP-HGA could gain the best known makespan in 13 out of 15 problems