Machine scheduling has been a popular area of research during the past four decades. Its object is to determine the sequence for processing jobs on a given set of machines. The need for scheduling arises from the limited resources available to the decision-maker. In this study, a special situation involving a computationally difficult
n/2/Flowshop/ αF + βCmax flowshop scheduling problem is discussed. We develop a memetic algorithm (MA, a hybrid genetic algorithm) by combining a genetic algorithm and the greedy heuristic using the pairwise exchange method and the insert method, to solve the n/2/Flowshop/ αF + βCmax flowshop scheduling problem. Preliminary computational experiments demonstrate the efficiency and performance of the proposed memetic algorithm. Our results compare favourably with the best-known branch-and-bound algorithm, the traditional genetic algorithm and the best-known heuristic algorithm.
Similar content being viewed by others
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yeh, WC. A Memetic Algorithm for the n/2/Flowshop/αF + βC max Scheduling Problem. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 20, 464–473 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s001700200179
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s001700200179