A hybrid multi-objective immune algorithm for a flow shop scheduling problem with bi-objectives: Weighted mean completion time and weighted mean tardiness

This paper investigates a novel multi-objective model for a no-wait flow shop scheduling problem that minimizes both the weighted mean completion time and weighted mean tardiness . Obtaining an optimal solution for this type of complex, large-sized problem in reasonable computational time by using traditional approaches and optimization tools is extremely difficult. This paper presents a new hybrid multi-objective algorithm based on the features of a biological immune system (IS) and bacterial optimization (BO) to find Pareto optimal solutions for the given problem. To validate the performance of the proposed hybrid multi-objective immune algorithm (HMOIA) in terms of solution quality and diversity level, various test problems are examined. Further, the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, based on various metrics, is compared against five prominent multi-objective evolutionary algorithms: PS-NC GA, NSGA-II, SPEA-II, MOIA, and MISA. Our computational results suggest that our proposed HMOIA outperforms the five foregoing algorithms, especially for large-sized problems.     

A multi-objective scatter search for a mixed-model assembly line sequencing problem

A mixed-model assembly line (MMAL) is a type of production line where a variety of product models similar to product characteristics are assembled. There is a set of criteria on which to judge sequences of product models in terms of the effective utilization of this line. In this paper, we consider three objectives, simultaneously: minimizing total utility work, total production rate variation, and total setup cost. A multi-objective sequencing problem and its mathematical formulation are described. Since this type of problem is NP-hard, a new multi-objective scatter search (MOSS) is designed for searching locally Pareto-optimal frontier for the problem. To validate the performance of the proposed algorithm, in terms of solution quality and diversity level, various test problems are made and the reliability of the proposed algorithm, based on some comparison metrics, is compared with three prominent multi-objective genetic algorithms, i.e. PS-NC GA, NSGA-II, and SPEA-II. The computational results show that the proposed MOSS outperforms the existing genetic algorithms, especially for the large-sized problems.     

A realistic variant of bi-objective unrelated parallel machine scheduling problem: NSGA-II and MOACO approaches

The problem investigated in this study involves an unrelated parallel machine scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times, different release dates, machine eligibility and precedence constraints. This problem has been inspired from a realistic scheduling problem in the shipyard. The optimization criteria are to simultaneously minimize mean weighted flow time and mean weighted tardiness. To formulate this complicated problem, a new mixed-integer programming model is presented. Considering the NP-complete characteristic of this problem, two famous meta-heuristics including a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) and a multi-objective ant colony optimization (MOACO) which is a modified and adaptive version of BicriterionAnt algorithm are developed. Obviously, the precedence constraints increase the complexity of the scheduling problem in strong sense in order to generate feasible solutions, especially in parallel machine environment. Therefore a new corrective algorithm is proposed to obtain the feasibility in all stages of the algorithms. Due to the fact that appropriate design of parameter has a significant effect on the performance of algorithms, we calibrate the parameters of these algorithms by using new approach of Taguchi method. The performances of the proposed meta-heuristics are evaluated by a number of numerical examples. The results indicated that the suggested MOACO statistically outperformed the proposed NSGA-II in solving the test problems. In addition, the application of the proposed algorithms is justified by a real block erection scheduling problem in the shipyard.     

Developing a multi-objective,multi-item inventory model and three algorithms for its solution

We develop a multi-objective model in a multi-product inventory system.The proposed model is a joint replenishment problem(JRP) that has two objective functions.The first one is minimization of total ordering and inventory holding costs,which is the same objective function as the classic JRP.To increase the applicability of the proposed model,we suppose that transportation cost is independent of time,is not a part of holding cost,and is calculated based on the maximum of stored inventory,as is the case in many real inventory problems.Thus,the second objective function is minimization of total transportation cost.To solve this problem three efficient algorithms are proposed.First,the RAND algorithm,called the best heuristic algorithm for solving the JRP,is modified to be applicable for the proposed problem.A multi-objective genetic algorithm(MOGA) is developed as the second algorithm to solve the problem.Finally,the model is solved by a new algorithm that is a combination of the RAND algorithm and MOGA.The performances of these algorithms are then compared with those of the previous approaches and with each other,and the findings imply their ability in finding Pareto optimal solutions to 3200 randomly produced problems.     

A new particle swarm algorithm for a multi-objective mixed-model assembly line sequencing problem

The sequencing of products for mixed-model assembly line in Just-in-Time manufacturing systems is sometimes based on multiple criteria. In this paper, three major goals are to be simultaneously minimized: total utility work, total production rate variation, and total setup cost. A multi-objective sequencing problem and its mathematical formulation are described. Due to the NP-hardness of the problem, a new multi-objective particle swarm (MOPS) is designed to search locally Pareto-optimal frontier for the problem. To validate the performance of the proposed algorithm, various test problems are solved and the reliability of the proposed algorithm, based on some comparison metrics, is compared with three distinguished multi-objective genetic algorithms (MOGAs), i.e. PS-NC GA, NSGA-II, and SPEA-II. Comparison shows that MOPS provides superior results to MOGAs.     

A hybrid TP+PLS algorithm for bi-objective flow-shop scheduling problems

This paper presents a new, carefully designed algorithm for five bi-objective permutation flow shop scheduling problems that arise from the pairwise combinations of the objectives (i) makespan, (ii) the sum of the completion times of the jobs, and (iii) both, the weighted and non-weighted total tardiness of all jobs. The proposed algorithm combines two search methods, two-phase local search and Pareto local search, which are representative of two different, but complementary, paradigms for multi-objective optimization in terms of Pareto-optimality. The design of the hybrid algorithm is based on a careful experimental analysis of crucial algorithmic components of these two search methods. We compared our algorithm to the two best algorithms identified, among a set of 23 candidate algorithms, in a recent review of the bi-objective permutation flow-shop scheduling problem. We have reimplemented carefully these two algorithms in order to assess the quality of our algorithm. The experimental comparison in this paper shows that the proposed algorithm obtains results that often dominate the output of the two best algorithms from the literature. Therefore, our analysis shows without ambiguity that the proposed algorithm is a new state-of-the-art algorithm for the bi-objective permutation flow-shop problems studied in this paper.     

A hybrid multi-objective shuffled frog-leaping algorithm for a mixed-model assembly line sequencing problem

In this paper, a mixed-model assembly line (MMAL) sequencing problem is studied. This type of production system is used to manufacture multiple products along a single assembly line while maintaining the least possible inventories. With the growth in customers’ demand diversification, mixed-model assembly lines have gained increasing importance in the field of management. Among the available criteria used to judge a sequence in MMAL, the following three are taken into account: the minimization of total utility work, total production rate variation, and total setup cost. Due to the complexity of the problem, it is very difficult to obtain optimum solution for this kind of problems by means of traditional approaches. Therefore, a hybrid multi-objective algorithm based on shuffled frog-leaping algorithm (SFLA) and bacteria optimization (BO) are deployed. The performance of the proposed hybrid algorithm is then compared with three well-known genetic algorithms, i.e. PS-NC GA, NSGA-II, and SPEA-II. The computational results show that the proposed hybrid algorithm outperforms the existing genetic algorithms, significantly in large-sized problems.     

基于多目标飞蛾算法的电力系统无功优化研究

鉴于电力需求的日益增长与传统无功优化方法的桎梏,如何更加合理有效地解决电力系统的无功优化问题逐渐成为了研究的热点。提出一种多目标飞蛾扑火算法来解决电力系统多目标无功优化的问题,算法引入固定大小的外部储存机制、自适应的网格和筛选机制来有效存储和提升无功优化问题的帕累托最优解集,算法采用CEC2009标准多目标测试函数来进行仿真实验,并与两种经典算法进行性能的对比分析。此外,在电力系统IEEE 30节点上将该算法与MOPSO,NGSGA-II算法的求解结果进行比较分析的结果表明,多目标飞蛾算法具有良好的性能,并在解决电力系统多目标无功优化问题上具有良好的潜力。     

Adaptive multi-objective genetic algorithms for scheduling of drilling operation in printed circuit board industry

In this paper, a scheduling problem for drilling operation in a real-world printed circuit board factory is considered. Two derivatives of multi-objective genetic algorithms are proposed under two objectives, i.e. makespan and total tardiness time. The proposed algorithms possess a rare characteristic from traditional multi-objective genetic algorithms. The crossover and mutation rates of the proposed algorithms can be variables or adjusted according to the searching performance while the rates of traditional algorithm are fixed. Production data retrieved from the shop floor are used as the test instances. The numerical result indicates that both two proposed multi-objective genetic algorithms have satisfactory performance and the adaptive multi-objective genetic algorithm performs better. The result shows the algorithms are effective and efficiency to the current system used in the shop floor. Thus, the result may be of interest to practical applications.     

遗传算法解柔性作业车间调度问题应用综述

柔性作业车间调度问题是典型的NP难问题,对实际生产应用具有指导作用。近年来,随着遗传算法的发展,利用遗传算法来解决柔性作业车间调度问题的思想和方法层出不穷。为了促进遗传算法求解柔性作业车间调度问题的进一步发展,阐述了柔性作业车间调度问题的研究理论,对已有改进方法进行了分类,通过对现存问题的分析,探讨了未来的发展方向。     

基于灰色综合关联分析的多目标优化方法

针对现有多目标优化方法存在的搜索性能弱、效率低等问题,提出一种基于灰色综合关联分析的多目标优化方法.该多目标优化方法采用单目标优化算法构建高质量的参考序列,计算参考序列与优化解的目标函数值序列之间的灰色综合关联度,定义基于灰色综合关联度的解支配关系准则,将灰色综合关联度作为多目标优化算法的适应度值.以带顺序相关调整时间的多目标流水车间调度问题作为应用对象,建立总生产成本、最大完工时间、平均流程时间及机器平均闲置时间的多目标函数优化模型.提出基于灰色关联分析的多目标烟花算法,对所建立的多目标优化模型进行优化求解.仿真实验表明,所提出多目标烟花算法的性能优于3种基于不同多目标优化方法的烟花算法及两种经典多目标算法,验证了所提出的多目标优化方法及多目标算法的可行性和有效性.     

一种求解job shop问题的混合多目标遗传算法

提出一种基于操作编码、采用递进策略与非劣解局部搜索相结合的混合多目标遗传算法。通过将递进进化模式和非劣解局部搜索策略引入到算法结构,改善了算法对解空间的遍历性与算法的收敛性。采用改进算法对典型的jobshop算例进行三目标优化,所得结果验证了算法的有效性。     

Two new meta-heuristics for a bi-objective supply chain scheduling problem in flow-shop environment

In this study, an integrated multi-objective production-distribution flow-shop scheduling problem will be taken into consideration with respect to two objective functions. The first objective function aims to minimize total weighted tardiness and make-span and the second objective function aims to minimize the summation of total weighted earliness, total weighted number of tardy jobs, inventory costs and total delivery costs. Firstly, a mathematical model is proposed for this problem. After that, two new meta-heuristic algorithms are developed in order to solve the problem. The first algorithm (HCMOPSO), is a multi-objective particle swarm optimization combined with a heuristic mutation operator, Gaussian membership function and a chaotic sequence and the second algorithm (HBNSGA-II), is a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II with a heuristic criterion for generation of initial population and a heuristic crossover operator. The proposed HCMOPSO and HBNSGA-II are tested and compared with a Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II), a Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) and two state-of-the-art algorithms from recent researches, by means of several comparing criteria. The computational experiments demonstrate the outperformance of the proposed HCMOPSO and HBNSGA-II.     

An optimal image watermarking approach based on a multi-objective genetic algorithm

In accordance with the multi-objective nature of image watermarking, an optimal image watermarking approach using a multi-objective genetic algorithm is presented in this paper. Both watermarking parameters and embedding positions are often important factors affecting the performance of watermarking systems. The proposed multi-objective watermarking method can automatically optimize system parameters, and a variable-length mechanism is specially designed to search the most suitable positions for embedding watermarks. The method can also remove the difficult issue of determining optimal watermarking parameters from previous watermarking algorithms. The proposed multi-objective watermarking method directly deals with the problem of optimizing watermarking under non-dominated meaning, thus it can effectively avoid the difficulty of determining the optimally weighted factor in existing single-objective watermarking schemes. In addition, a Pareto-optimal set generated by multi-objective optimization can provide flexibility in selecting the most suitable watermarking parameters according to practical requirements.     

Multiobjective scheduling algorithm for flexible manufacturing systems with Petri nets

In this work, we focus on general multi-objective scheduling problems that can be modeled using a Petri net framework. Due to their generality, Petri nets are a useful abstraction that captures multiple characteristics of real-life processes.To provide a general solution procedure for the abstraction, we propose three alternative approaches using an indirect scheme to represent the solution: (1) a genetic algorithm that combines two objectives through a weighted fitness function, (2) a non dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) that explicitly addresses the multi-objective nature of the problem and (3) a multi-objective local search approach that simultaneously explores multiple candidate solutions. These algorithms are tested in an extensive computational experiment showing the applicability of this general framework to obtain quality solutions.     

Modelling and scheduling multi-objective flow shop problems with interfering jobs

This paper studies multi-objective flow shop scheduling problems with interfering jobs. That is, there are two sets of jobs and each of which has its own objective. Some jobs are scheduled so as to minimize makespan while the others are to minimize total tardiness. In this case, the problem was mathematically modeled by a mixed integer linear program. Then, a novel biogeography-based optimization was developed to solve the problem. To evaluate the algorithm, its performance was compared with three well-known algorithms in the literature. The results of the present study show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the other tested algorithms.     

Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms based on the summation of normalized objectives and diversified selection

Most multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) use the concept of dominance in the search process to select the top solutions as parents in an elitist manner. However, as MOEAs are probabilistic search methods, some useful information may be wasted, if the dominated solutions are completely disregarded. In addition, the diversity may be lost during the early stages of the search process leading to a locally optimal or partial Pareto-front. Beside this, the non-domination sorting process is complex and time consuming. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes multi-objective evolutionary algorithms based on Summation of normalized objective values and diversified selection (SNOV-DS). The performance of this algorithm is tested on a set of benchmark problems using both multi-objective evolutionary programming (MOEP) and multi-objective differential evolution (MODE). With the proposed method, the performance metric has improved significantly and the speed of the parent selection process has also increased when compared with the non-domination sorting. In addition, the proposed algorithm also outperforms ten other algorithms.     

Solving a bi-objective flowshop scheduling problem by a Multi-objective Immune System and comparing with SPEA2+ and SPGA

This paper presents a bi-objective flowshop scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times. The objective functions are to minimize the total completion time and the total earliness/tardiness for all jobs. An integer programming model is developed for the given problem that belongs to an NP-hard class. Thus, an algorithm based on a Multi-objective Immune System (MOIS) is proposed to find a locally Pareto-optimal frontier of the problem. To prove the efficiency of the proposed MOIS, different test problems are solved. Based on some comparison metrics, the computational results of the proposed MOIS is compared with the results obtained using two well-established multi-objective genetic algorithms, namely SPEA2+ and SPGA. The related results show that the proposed MOIS outperforms genetic algorithms, especially for the large-sized problems.     

Elite-guided multi-objective artificial bee colony algorithm

Multi-objective optimization has been a difficult problem and a research focus in the field of science and engineering. This paper presents a novel multi-objective optimization algorithm called elite-guided multi-objective artificial bee colony (EMOABC) algorithm. In our proposal, the fast non-dominated sorting and population selection strategy are applied to measure the quality of the solution and select the better ones. The elite-guided solution generation strategy is designed to exploit the neighborhood of the existing solutions based on the guidance of the elite. Furthermore, a novel fitness calculation method is presented to calculate the selecting probability for onlookers. The proposed algorithm is validated on benchmark functions in terms of four indicators: GD, ER, SPR, and TI. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can find solutions with competitive convergence and diversity within a shorter period of time, compared with the traditional multi-objective algorithms. Consequently, it can be considered as a viable alternative to solve the multi-objective optimization problems.     

柔性作业车间调度问题的多目标优化算法

柔性作业车间调度问题具有解集多样化与解空间复杂的特点,传统多目标优化算法求解时容易陷入局部最优且丢失解的多样性。在建立以最大完工时间、最大能耗、机器总负荷为优化目标的柔性作业车间调度模型的情况下,提出一种改进的非支配排序遗传算法（Improved Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II, INSGA-II）求解该模型。INSGA-II算法先将随机式初始化与启发式初始化方法混合,提高种群多样性;然后对工序部分与机器部分采用针对性的交叉、变异策略,提高算法全局搜索能力;最后设计自适应的交叉、变异算子以兼顾算法的全局收敛与局部寻优能力。在mk01～mk07标准数据集上的实验结果显示INSGA-II算法有着更优的算法收敛性与解集多样性。