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A heuristically directed immune algorithm to minimize makespan and total flow time in permutation flow shops

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Abstract

As an emerging novel evolutionary technique, the immune algorithm has gained a lot of attention and wide applications in various fields of engineering and management. To our knowledge, this paper first considers the application of immune algorithm for the classic permutation flow shop scheduling problem. We present a hybrid heuristic combining immune algorithm and simulated annealing for the n-job, m-machine permutation flow shop scheduling problem to minimize makespan and total flow time. A heuristically directed population-based construction approach in the immune algorithm and a forward/backward shift neighborhood search heuristic in the simulated annealing of the proposed method is utilized to explore the search process for better schedules of jobs as well to speed up the convergence speed of the proposed algorithm. The proposed method is tested with Taillard’s flow shop scheduling benchmark instances for different problems with job sizes varying from 20 to 500. The computational results demonstrate that the proposed heuristic is very competitive with the state-of-the-art procedures in terms of both solution quality and computational times.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 700032, India

    Arindam Chakravorty & Dipak Laha

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  1. Arindam Chakravorty
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  2. Dipak Laha
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Correspondence to Dipak Laha.

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Chakravorty, A., Laha, D. A heuristically directed immune algorithm to minimize makespan and total flow time in permutation flow shops. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 93, 3759–3776 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-017-0679-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-017-0679-1

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