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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Automatic Algorithm Design for Hybrid Flowshop Scheduling Problems

[EN] Industrial production scheduling problems are challenges that researchers have been trying to solve for decades. Many practical scheduling problems such as the hybrid flowshop are ATP-hard. As a result, researchers resort to metaheuristics to obtain effective and efficient solutions. The traditional design process of metaheuristics is mainly manual, often metaphor-based, biased by previous experience and prone to producing overly tailored methods that only work well on the tested problems and objectives. In this paper, we use an Automatic Algorithm Design (AAD) methodology to eliminate these limitations. AAD is capable of composing algorithms from components with minimal human intervention. We test the proposed MD for three different optimization objectives in the hybrid flowshop. Comprehensive computational and statistical testing demonstrates that automatically designed algorithms outperform specifically tailored state-of-the-art methods for the tested objectives in most cases.Pedro Alfaro-Fernandez and Ruben Ruiz are partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, under the project "OPTEP-Port Terminal Operations Optimization" (No. RTI2018-094940-B-I00) financed with FEDER funds and under grants BES-2013-064858 and EEBB-I-15-10089. This work was supported by the COMEX project (P7/36) within the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme of the Belgian Science Policy Office. Thomas Stiitzle acknowledges support from the Belgian F.R.S.-FNRS, of which he is a Research Director.Alfaro-Fernandez, P.; Ruiz García, R.; Pagnozzi, F.; Stützle, T. (2020). Automatic Algorithm Design for Hybrid Flowshop Scheduling Problems. 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Improved cuckoo search algorithm for hybrid flow shop scheduling problems to minimize makespan. Applied Soft Computing, 19, 93-101. doi:10.1016/j.asoc.2014.02.005Marichelvam, M. K., Prabaharan, T., Yang, X. S., & Geetha, M. (2013). Solving hybrid flow shop scheduling problems using bat algorithm. International Journal of Logistics Economics and Globalisation, 5(1), 15. doi:10.1504/ijleg.2013.054428Mascia, F., López-Ibáñez, M., Dubois-Lacoste, J., & Stützle, T. (2014). Grammar-based generation of stochastic local search heuristics through automatic algorithm configuration tools. Computers & Operations Research, 51, 190-199. doi:10.1016/j.cor.2014.05.020Nawaz, M., Enscore, E. E., & Ham, I. (1983). A heuristic algorithm for the m-machine, n-job flow-shop sequencing problem. Omega, 11(1), 91-95. doi:10.1016/0305-0483(83)90088-9Pan, Q.-K., & Dong, Y. (2014). An improved migrating birds optimisation for a hybrid flowshop scheduling with total flowtime minimisation. 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A. (2010). The hybrid flow shop scheduling problem. European Journal of Operational Research, 205(1), 1-18. doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2009.09.024Sörensen, K. (2013). Metaheuristics-the metaphor exposed. International Transactions in Operational Research, 22(1), 3-18. doi:10.1111/itor.12001Vignier, A., Billaut, J.-C., & Proust, C. (1999). Les problèmes d’ordonnancement de type flow-shop hybride : état de l’art. RAIRO - Operations Research, 33(2), 117-183. doi:10.1051/ro:1999108Wang, S., Wang, L., Liu, M., & Xu, Y. (2013). An enhanced estimation of distribution algorithm for solving hybrid flow-shop scheduling problem with identical parallel machines. The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 68(9-12), 2043-2056. doi:10.1007/s00170-013-4819-yXu, Y., Wang, L., Wang, S., & Liu, M. (2013). An effective shuffled frog-leaping algorithm for solving the hybrid flow-shop scheduling problem with identical parallel machines. 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Efficiency of the solution representations for the hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with makespan objective

In this paper we address the classical hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with makespan objective. As this problem is known to be NP-hard and a very common layout in real-life manufacturing scenarios, many studies have been proposed in the literature to solve it. These contributions use different solution representations of the feasible schedules, each one with its own advantages and disadvantages. Some of them do not guarantee that all feasible semiactive schedules are represented in the space of solutions –thus limiting in principle their effectiveness– but, on the other hand, these simpler solution representations possess clear advantages in terms of having consistent neighbourhoods with well-defined neighbourhood moves. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the solution space reduction and the ability to conduct an efficient search in this reduced solution space. This trade-off is determined by two aspects, i.e. the extent of the solution space reduction, and the quality of the schedules left aside by this solution space reduction. In this paper, we analyse the efficiency of the different solution representations employed in the literature for the problem. More specifically, we first establish the size of the space of semiactive schedules achieved by the different solution representations and, secondly, we address the issue of the quality of the schedules that can be achieved by these representations using the optimal solutions given by several MILP models and complete enumeration. The results obtained may contribute to design more efficient algorithms for the hybrid flow shop scheduling problem.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2016-80750-

Heuristics for the distributed blocking Ffow shop scheduling problem

Postprint (published version

Scheduling Jobs in Flowshops with the Introduction of Additional Machines in the Future

This is the author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/expert-systems-with-applications/.The problem of scheduling jobs to minimize total weighted tardiness in flowshops,\ud with the possibility of evolving into hybrid flowshops in the future, is investigated in\ud this paper. As this research is guided by a real problem in industry, the flowshop\ud considered has considerable flexibility, which stimulated the development of an\ud innovative methodology for this research. Each stage of the flowshop currently has\ud one or several identical machines. However, the manufacturing company is planning\ud to introduce additional machines with different capabilities in different stages in the\ud near future. Thus, the algorithm proposed and developed for the problem is not only\ud capable of solving the current flow line configuration but also the potential new\ud configurations that may result in the future. A meta-heuristic search algorithm based\ud on Tabu search is developed to solve this NP-hard, industry-guided problem. Six\ud different initial solution finding mechanisms are proposed. A carefully planned\ud nested split-plot design is performed to test the significance of different factors and\ud their impact on the performance of the different algorithms. To the best of our\ud knowledge, this research is the first of its kind that attempts to solve an industry-guided\ud problem with the concern for future developments

Bat Algorithm: Literature Review and Applications

Bat algorithm (BA) is a bio-inspired algorithm developed by Yang in 2010 and BA has been found to be very efficient. As a result, the literature has expanded significantly in the last 3 years. This paper provides a timely review of the bat algorithm and its new variants. A wide range of diverse applications and case studies are also reviewed and summarized briefly here. Further research topics are also discussed.Comment: 10 page