A hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm for flowshop robust scheduling under machine breakdown uncertainty

• Published in: International journal of computer integrated manufacturing Vol. 29; no. 7; pp. 709 - 719
• Main Authors: Fazayeli, Mohammad, Aleagha, Mohammad-Reza, Bashirzadeh, Reza, Shafaei, Rasoul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 02.07.2016
• Subjects: flowshop; machine breakdown; meta-heuristic algorithm; robust schedule; uncertainty; β-robustness
• ISSN: 0951-192X; 1362-3052
• DOI: 10.1080/0951192X.2015.1067907

One of the most important assumptions in production scheduling is permanent availability of the machines without any breakdown. In real-world scheduling problems, machines could be unavailable due to various reasons such as preventive maintenance and unpredicted breakdowns. In this paper, a flowshop scheduling problem under machine breakdown uncertainty is studied. The machines are subject to breakdown in practice caused by components' wear-out. A proactive scheduling is considered to deal with unpredictable machine breakdown. An effective hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm based on genetic and simulated annealing algorithms is proposed to tackle such an NP-hard problem. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, its performance in terms of maximising the β-robustness of makespan was compared with six other heuristic and meta-heuristic algorithms. Computational results confirm that the proposed algorithm outperforms the others.