A Discrete Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Minimizing the Total Flow Time in the Blocking Flow Shop Scheduling

• Published in: Chinese journal of chemical engineering Vol. 20; no. 6; pp. 1067 - 1073
• Main Author: 邓冠龙 徐震浩 顾幸生
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.12.2012
• Subjects: Algorithms; artificial bee colony algorithm; Benchmarking; blocking flow shop scheduling; Chemical engineering; Colonies; Criteria; Mathematical models; Permutations; Scheduling; Swarm intelligence; total flow time; 工蜂; 总流量; 时间标准; 最小化; 流水车间调度; 离散; 群算法; 车间调度问题; artificial bee colony algorithm; blocking flow shop scheduling; total flow time
• ISSN: 1004-9541; 2210-321X
• DOI: 10.1016/S1004-9541(12)60588-6

A discrete artificial bee colony algorithm is proposed for solving the blocking flow shop scheduling problem with total flow time criterion. Firstly, the solution in the algorithm is represented as job permutation. Secondly, an initialization scheme based on a variant of the NEH （Nawaz-Enscore-Ham） heuristic and a local search is designed to construct the initial population with both quality and diversity. Thirdly, based on the idea of iterated greedy algorithm, some newly designed schemes for employed bee, onlooker bee and scout bee are presented. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested on the well-known Taillard benchmark set, and the computational results demonstrate the effectiveness of the discrete artificial bee colony algorithm. In addition, the best known solutions of the benchmark set are provided for the blocking flow shop scheduling problem with total flow time criterion.