An agent-based genetic algorithm for hybrid flowshops with sequence dependent setup times to minimise makespan

This paper deals with a variant of flowshop scheduling, namely, the hybrid or flexible flowshop with sequence dependent setup times. This type of flowshop is frequently used in the batch production industry and helps reduce the gap between research and operational use. This scheduling problem is NP-hard and solutions for large problems are based on non-exact methods. An improved genetic algorithm (GA) based on software agent design to minimise the makespan is presented. The paper proposes using an inherent characteristic of software agents to create a new perspective in GA design. To verify the developed metaheuristic, computational experiments are conducted on a well-known benchmark problem dataset. The experimental results show that the proposed metaheuristic outperforms some of the well-known methods and the state-of-art algorithms on the same benchmark problem dataset.The translation of this paper was funded by Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain.Gómez Gasquet, P.; Andrés Romano, C.; Lario Esteban, FC. (2012). An agent-based genetic algorithm for hybrid flowshops with sequence dependent setup times to minimise makespan. Expert Systems with Applications. 39(9):8095-8107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2012.01.158S8095810739

New efficient constructive heuristics for the hybrid flowshop to minimise makespan: A computational evaluation of heuristics

This paper addresses the hybrid flow shop scheduling problem to minimise makespan, a well-known scheduling problem for which many constructive heuristics have been proposed in the literature. Nevertheless, the state of the art is not clear due to partial or non homogeneous comparisons. In this paper, we review these heuristics and perform a comprehensive computational evaluation to determine which are the most efficient ones. A total of 20 heuristics are implemented and compared in this study. In addition, we propose four new heuristics for the problem. Firstly, two memory-based constructive heuristics are proposed, where a sequence is constructed by inserting jobs one by one in a partial sequence. The most promising insertions tested are kept in a list. However, in contrast to the Tabu search, these insertions are repeated in future iterations instead of forbidding them. Secondly, we propose two constructive heuristics based on Johnson’s algorithm for the permutation flowshop scheduling problem. The computational results carried out on an extensive testbed show that the new proposals outperform the existing heuristics.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2016-80750-

Iterated-greedy-based algorithms with beam search initialization for the permutation flowshop to minimize total tardiness

The permutation flow shop scheduling problem is one of the most studied operations research related problems. Literally, hundreds of exact and approximate algorithms have been proposed to optimise several objective functions. In this paper we address the total tardiness criterion, which is aimed towards the satisfaction of customers in a make-to-order scenario. Although several approximate algorithms have been proposed for this problem in the literature, recent contributions for related problems suggest that there is room for improving the current available algorithms. Thus, our contribution is twofold: First, we propose a fast beam-search-based constructive heuristic that estimates the quality of partial sequences without a complete evaluation of their objective function. Second, using this constructive heuristic as initial solution, eight variations of an iterated-greedy-based algorithm are proposed. A comprehensive computational evaluation is performed to establish the efficiency of our proposals against the existing heuristics and metaheuristics for the problem.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2013-44461-PMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2016-80750-

Efficient heuristics for the parallel blocking flow shop scheduling problem

We consider the NP-hard problem of scheduling n jobs in F identical parallel flow shops, each consisting of a series of m machines, and doing so with a blocking constraint. The applied criterion is to minimize the makespan, i.e., the maximum completion time of all the jobs in F flow shops (lines). The Parallel Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (PFSP) is conceptually similar to another problem known in the literature as the Distributed Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (DPFSP), which allows modeling the scheduling process in companies with more than one factory, each factory with a flow shop configuration. Therefore, the proposed methods can solve the scheduling problem under the blocking constraint in both situations, which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been studied previously. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model along with some constructive and improvement heuristics to solve the parallel blocking flow shop problem (PBFSP) and thus minimize the maximum completion time among lines. The proposed constructive procedures use two approaches that are totally different from those proposed in the literature. These methods are used as initial solution procedures of an iterated local search (ILS) and an iterated greedy algorithm (IGA), both of which are combined with a variable neighborhood search (VNS). The proposed constructive procedure and the improved methods take into account the characteristics of the problem. The computational evaluation demonstrates that both of them –especially the IGA– perform considerably better than those algorithms adapted from the DPFSP literature.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

MINIMASI MAKESPAN PADA PERSOALAN PENJADWALAN ORDERED FLOWSHOP MENGGUNAKAN PSO

The production scheduling problem is in the kind of flowshop with n jobs and m machines, to get the order of the schedule for allocating operations of the jobs to the available machines so as to get the minimum total time for completion of all job or commonly called makespan. This study uses an optimization technique approach with the PSO algorithm to get minimum makespan on the ordered flowhop scheduling problem. The performance of the scheduling algorithm presented is evaluated by testing on a benchmark data set of 240 variations in the combination number of jobs and machines. The minimum measure is obtained as a result of scheduling with PSO, whose process stops at a certain iteration when in the last 10 iterations there is no change in the value of a better makespan. The performance of the PSO algorithm is efficient at regular flow scheduling with the use of the most iterations of 19 iterations and the longest execution time of 28.42 seconds or less than half a minute, namely scheduling instances with the largest number of machines and jobs. In this research, only the analysis of the resulting minimal forward and the time of execution was carried out. Further research can be extended by not only measuring the minimum makespan, such as measuring total flowtime, total tardiness, and others

Assembly flowshop scheduling problem: Speed-up procedure and computational evaluation

In this paper, we address the assembly flowshop scheduling problem, which is a generalisation of two well-known scheduling problems in the literature: the three-stage Assembly Scheduling Problem (ASP) and its variant with two stages denoted as the two-stage ASP. For this problem, we prove several theoretical results which are used to propose a speed-up procedure. This acceleration mechanism can be applied in any insertion-based method for the problem under study and, consequently, also for their special cases. In addition, we propose four efficient constructive heuristics for the problem, based on both Johnson’s algorithm and the NEH heuristic. These proposals are compared against 47 algorithms existing in the literature for related problems. The results show the excellent performance of the proposals.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PID2019-108756RB-I00Junta de Andalucía P18-FR-1149, 5835Junta de Andalucía US- 126451

Reduction of permutation flowshop problems to single machine problems using machine dominance relations

The Permutation Flowshop Scheduling Problem with Makespan objective (PFSP-M) is known to be NP-hard for more than two machines, and literally hundreds of works in the last decades have proposed exact and approximate algorithms to solve it. These works—of computational/experimental nature—show that the PFSP-M is also empirically hard, in the sense that optimal or quasi-optimal sequences statistically represent a very small fraction of the space of feasible solutions, and that there are big differences among the corresponding makespan values. In the vast majority of these works, it has been assumed that (a) processing times are not job- and/or machine-correlated, and (b) all machines are initially available. However, some works have found that the problem turns to be almost trivial (i.e. almost every sequence yields an optimal or quasi-optimal solution) if one of these assumptions is dropped. To the best of our knowledge, no theoretical or experimental explanation has been proposed by this rather peculiar fact. Our hypothesis is that, under certain conditions of machine availability, or correlated processing times, the performance of a given sequence in a flowshop is largely determined by only one stage, thus effectively transforming the flowshop layout into a single machine. Since the single machine scheduling problem with makespan objective is a trivial problem where all feasible sequences are optimal, it would follow that, under these conditions, the equivalent PFSP-M is almost trivial. To address this working hypothesis from a general perspective, we investigate some conditions that allow reducing a permutation flowshop scheduling problem to a single machine scheduling problem, focusing on the two most common objectives in the literature, namely makespan and flowtime. Our work is a combination of theoretical and computational analysis, therefore several properties are derived to prove the conditions for an exact (theoretical) equivalence, together with an extensive computational evaluation to establish an empirical equivalence

A beam-search-based constructive heuristic for the PFSP to minimise total flowtime

In this paper we present a beam-search-based constructive heuristic to solve the permutation flowshop scheduling problem with total flowtime minimisation as objective. This well-known problem is NP-hard, and several heuristics have been developed in the literature. The proposed algorithm is inspired in the logic of the beam search, although it remains a fast constructive heuristic. The results obtained by the proposed algorithm outperform those obtained by other constructive heuristics in the literature for the problem, thus modifying substantially the state-of-the-art of efficient approximate procedures for the problem. In addition, the proposed algorithm even outperforms two of the best metaheuristics for many instances of the problem, using much lesser computation effort. The excellent performance of the proposal is also proved by the fact that the new heuristic found new best upper bounds for 35 of the 120 instances in Taillard’s benchmark.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2013-44461-PMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2016-80750-

Permutation flowshop scheduling problem with total core idle time minimization

-Part of special issue 10th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management and Control MIM 2022: Nantes, France, 22-24 June 2022 -Copyright © 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)In this paper, we present a deterministic permutation flowshop scheduling problem with a new objective function, the total core idle time. The interest of this objective is related to reduce the energy consumption of the system, taking into account that the energy needed during the processing times is constant, and that machines are switched off during the front and back idle times. Therefore, the energy consumption is dependent on the time where machines are in stand-by mode, i.e during the idle time of machines between jobs, named as core idle times. Constructive heuristics and metaheuristics are adapted from the permutation flowshop scheduling literature for classical objectives as makespan and total completion time. Additionally, a new variant of one of the metaheuristic is proposed, the VBIH-P. An experimental evaluation has been carried out to analyse the performance of all the methods. The results show an excellent performance of the VBIH-P compared to the adapted methods

Comparison of heuristics for rescheduling in permutation flowshops

NUMERO ESPECIAL / SPECIAL ISSUE XIII Congreso de Ingeniería de Organización 3nd International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial ManagementRescheduling is one of the main consequences of the variability in the shop floor, as a number of unforeseeable disruptions make impossible to follow the original schedule. In this paper we study a flowshop rescheduling problem where a set of jobs arrives to the system and it is scheduled together with jobs already present. The objective is to minimise the makespan of the new jobs and constrained with the fact that the maximum tardiness of the old jobs must be equal to zero. The problem is NP-hard, so we compare heuristic methods in order to select the best option.. La resecuenciación es una de las principales consecuencias de la variabilidad en los talleres, ya que las interrupciones no hacen posible el seguimiento de la secuencia inicial. Este trabajo aborda un problema de resecuenciación en flujo regular donde un conjunto de trabajos llega al sistema, y son secuenciados junto con un conjunto de trabajos que ya está planificado. El objetivo es minimizar el makespan de los nuevos trabajos, restringido a que la máxima tardanza de los trabajos antiguos debe ser cero. El problema es NP, por lo que se comparan diferentes métodos heurísticos para su resolución, y se selecciona la mejor opciónMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2007-61345Junta de Andalucía P08-TEP-363