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Ant colony optimization technique for the sequence-dependent flowshop scheduling problem

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Abstract

In the real world, production scheduling systems, usually optimal job scheduling, requires an explicit consideration of sequence-dependent setup times. One of the most important scheduling criteria in practical systems is makespan. In this paper, the author presents an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm for the sequence-dependent permutation flowshop scheduling problem. The proposed ACO algorithm benefits from a new approach for computing the initial pheromone values and a local search. The proposed algorithm is tested on randomly generated problem instances and results indicate that it is very competitive with the existing best metaheuristics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Ashkezar Branch, Yazd, Iran

    Mohammad Mirabi

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  1. Mohammad Mirabi
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Correspondence to Mohammad Mirabi.

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Mirabi, M. Ant colony optimization technique for the sequence-dependent flowshop scheduling problem. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 55, 317–326 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-010-3037-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-010-3037-0

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