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Ant colony systems for the single-machine total weighted earliness tardiness scheduling problem

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Abstract

Single-machine weighted earliness tardiness scheduling is a prevalent problem in just-in-time production environments. Yet, the case with distinct due dates is strongly NP-hard. Herein, it is approximately solved using ASV, an ant colony-based system with a reduced number of ants and of colonies and with daemon actions that explore the search space around the ants using a variable neighborhood search (VNS). The numerical investigation provides computational proof of the utility of the daemon actions. In addition, it infers that these latter can be applied either to the initial or to subsequent colonies. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of using ant colony optimization as the multiple restart engine of VNS. Finally, it shows that ASV obtains the optimum for most small-sized instances. It has a 0.2 % average deviation from the optimum over all benchmark instances.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Statistics and Operations Research, College of Science, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969, 13060, Safat, Kuwait

    Rym M’Hallah

  2. Biomedical Sciences Department, College of Nursing, Public Authority for Applied Education and Training, P.O. Box 23167, 13062, Safat, Kuwait

    Ali Alhajraf

Authors
  1. Rym M’Hallah
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  2. Ali Alhajraf
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Correspondence to Rym M’Hallah.

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M’Hallah, R., Alhajraf, A. Ant colony systems for the single-machine total weighted earliness tardiness scheduling problem. J Sched 19, 191–205 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10951-015-0429-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10951-015-0429-x

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