Thursday , March 28 2024

A Bi-Criteria Approach to the M-machine Flowshop Scheduling Problem

R. RAJKUMAR
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College
Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, India
Corresponding author

P. SHAHABUDEEN
Department of Industrial Engineering, Anna University
Chennai, India

P. NAGARAJ
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College
Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, India

S. ARUNACHALAM
School of Computing and Technology, University of East London
London

T. PAGE
Department of Design and Technology, Loughborough University
Loughborough, UK

Abstract: This paper considers the problem of permutation flowshop scheduling with the objectives of minimising the makespan and total flowtime of jobs, and presents an Improved Genetic Algorithm (IGA). The initial population of the genetic algorithm is created using the popular NEH constructive heuristic (Nawaz et al., 1983). In IGA, multi-crossover operators and multi-mutation operators are applied randomly to subpopulations divided from the original population to enhance the exploring potential and to enrich the diversity of the crossover templates. The performance of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by applying it to benchmark problems available in the OR-Library. Computation results based on some permutation flowshop scheduling benchmark problems show that the IGA gives better solution when compared with the earlier reported results.

Keywords: Flowshop scheduling, Makespan, Total flowtime, Genetic Algorithm.

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CITE THIS PAPER AS:
R. RAJKUMAR,  P. SHAHABUDEEN,  P. NAGARAJ,  S. ARUNACHALAM,  T. PAGE,  A Bi-Criteria Approach to the M-machine Flowshop Scheduling Problem, Studies in Informatics and Control, ISSN 1220-1766, vol. 18 (4), pp. 127-136, 2009.