An ACO algorithm for scheduling a flow shop with setup times

Publication Title

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering

ISSN

17485037

E-ISSN

44057

Document Type

Article

Abstract

A flow shop scheduling problem with setup times has been studied in a food processing setting. This company packs cooking sauces and spices. The objective is to minimise the makespan (Cmax) taking the setup times into consideration. Given that this problem in NP-hard, an ant colony optimisation (ACO) algorithm has been developed to find the initial solution which is further improved using 2-opt and 3-opt local heuristic. Using Taillard's benchmark problems' processing times and randomly generated setup times, 60 problem instances were computed for 50 to 200 jobs using 10 and 20 machine scenarios. These Cmax values were compared against the results obtained through a particle swarm optimisation (PSO) metaheuristic. The results clearly show that the ACO algorithm schedules the machines consistently well to minimise the Cmax value in comparison to the PSO algorithm.

First Page

98

Last Page

109

Publication Date

1-1-2020

DOI

10.1504/IJISE.2020.109123

Keywords

ACO, Ant colony optimisation, Flow shop, Makespan, Particle swarm optimisation, PSO, Scheduling, Setup time

Department

Department of Engineering Technology

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