Minimizing total weighted tardiness on heterogeneous batch processing machines with incompatible job families

This paper addresses a specific class of scheduling parallel batching problem, which is observed in steel casting industries. The focus of this research is to minimize the total weighted tardiness on heterogeneous batch processing machines under conditions of dynamic job arrivals, incompatible job families and non-identical job sizes. This type of parallel batching problem arises in a number of different settings, including diffusion in wafer fabrication, heat treatment operations in aircraft industries, and metal working. The problem is viewed as a three stage-decision-problem: the first stage involves selecting a machine from the heterogeneous batch processing machines for scheduling; the second stage involves the selection of a job family from the available incompatible job families; and the third stage involves the selection of a set of jobs to create a batch from the selected job family based on the capacity of the selected batch-processing machine. Since the problem is NP-hard, a few greedy heuristics are proposed. The computational experiments show that the proposed greedy heuristic algorithms are capable of consistently obtaining near-optimal solutions (statistically estimated) in very reasonable computational time on a Pentium III 650 Mz with 128 MB RAM.     

Minimizing total weighted tardiness on heterogeneous batch processing machines with incompatible job families

This paper addresses a specific class of scheduling parallel batching problem, which is observed in steel casting industries. The focus of this research is to minimize the total weighted tardiness on heterogeneous batch processing machines under conditions of dynamic job arrivals, incompatible job families and non-identical job sizes. This type of parallel batching problem arises in a number of different settings, including diffusion in wafer fabrication, heat treatment operations in aircraft industries, and metal working. The problem is viewed as a three stage-decision-problem: the first stage involves selecting a machine from the heterogeneous batch processing machines for scheduling; the second stage involves the selection of a job family from the available incompatible job families; and the third stage involves the selection of a set of jobs to create a batch from the selected job family based on the capacity of the selected batch-processing machine. Since the problem is NP-hard, a few greedy heuristics are proposed. The computational experiments show that the proposed greedy heuristic algorithms are capable of consistently obtaining near-optimal solutions (statistically estimated) in very reasonable computational time on a Pentium III 650 Mz with 128 MB RAM.     

Unrelated parallel machine scheduling with secondary resource constraints

This paper considers unrelated parallel machine scheduling with secondary resource constraints. There are n jobs, each needing to be processed on one of the fitted machines. A setup that includes detaching one die and attaching another from the fitted die type is incurred if the type of job scheduled is different from the last job on that machine. For each kind of die type, the number of dies available is limited. Due to the mechanical structure of the machines, the processing time of a job depends on the machine on which the job is processed, and some jobs are restricted to be processed only on certain machines. In this paper, a heuristic with a capability relative to a runtime and solution quality is developed to minimise the makespan. The performance of the presented heuristic is evaluated through extensive computational experiments. Computational results show that the presented heuristic outperforms the search method tested. It is expected that this research can be applied in industry where unrelated parallel machines are used to process different components and setups for auxiliary equipments are required.     

Combined column generation and constructive heuristic for a proportionate flexible flow shop scheduling

In a proportionate flow shop problem, jobs have to be processed through a fixed sequence of machines, and processing time for each job is equal on all machines. Such a problem has seldom been tackled. Proportionate flexible flow shop (PFFS) scheduling problems combine the properties of proportionate flow shop scheduling problems and parallel machine scheduling problems. This study presents a combined approach based on column generation (CG) for a PFFS problem with the criterion to minimize the objective of the total weighted completion time (TWCT). Minimizing TWCT in a PFFS problem significantly differs from the parallel-identical-machine scheduling problem, an optimal schedule in which jobs on each machine are in the weighted shortest processing time (WSPT) order. This combined approach adopts a CG approach to effectively handle job assignments to machines, and a constructive heuristic to obtain an optimal sequence for a single machine. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the combined approach in obtaining excellent quality solutions in a reasonable time, especially for large-scale problems.     

Scheduling on identical parallel machines to minimize total completion time with deadline and machine eligibility constraints

This study addresses the identical parallel machine scheduling problem with job deadlines and machine eligibility constraints to minimize total job completion time. Jobs must be completed before or at a deadline and preemptions are not allowed. Every job is allowed to be processed on a specified subset of machines. This problem is NP-hard. A heuristic and a branch and bound algorithm are developed to solve the problem. For the branch and bound algorithm, a lower bound based on the dual solution of the assignment problem is proposed and the heuristic serves as the initial upper bound. Many dominance rules are developed to curtail the branching nodes during the search procedure. Computational results indicate that the lower bound improves the performance of those in the literature in terms of execution time, and heuristic consistently generates a good quality schedule.     

Algorithms for flexible flow shop problems with unrelated parallel machines, setup times, and dual criteria

In textile industries, production facilities are established as multi-stage production flow shop facilities, where a production stage may be made up of parallel machines. This known as a flexible or hybrid flow shop environment. This paper considers the problem of scheduling n independent jobs in such an environment. In addition, we also consider the general case in which parallel machines at each stage may be unrelated. Each job is processed in ordered operations on a machine at each stage. Its release date and due date are given. The preemption of jobs is not permitted. We consider both sequence- and machine-dependent setup times. The problem is to determine a schedule that minimizes a convex combination of makespan and the number of tardy jobs. A 0–1 mixed integer program of the problem is formulated. Since this problem is NP-hard in the strong sense, we develop heuristic algorithms to solve it approximately. Firstly, several basic dispatching rules and well-known constructive heuristics for flow shop makespan scheduling problems are generalized to the problem under consideration. We sketch how, from a job sequence, a complete schedule for the flexible flow shop problem with unrelated parallel machines can be constructed. To improve the solutions, polynomial heuristic improvement methods based on shift moves of jobs are applied. Then, genetic algorithms are suggested. We discuss the components of these algorithms and test their parameters. The performance of the heuristics is compared relative to each other on a set of test problems with up to 50 jobs and 20 stages.     

一种动态识别瓶颈机床的启发算法

瓶颈机床是影响车间生产和调度的关键因素。针对Jobshop调度中的瓶颈机床确定问题,提出了动态识别瓶颈机床的搜索算法框架。并详细讨论了算法框架中的工序开始时间窗、搜索空间的概率模型和动态启发算法。最后用算例验证了动态启发算法的有效性。     

Optimal parallel machines scheduling with machine availability and eligibility constraints

In reality, the machine might become unavailable due to machine breakdowns or various inevitable reasons, and machine might have different capability to processing job. Motivated by this, we consider the problem of scheduling n non-preemptive and independent jobs on m identical machines incorporating machine availability and eligibility constraints while minimizing the maximum lateness. Each machine is capable of processing at specific availability intervals. We develop a branch and bound algorithm applying several immediate selection rules for solving this scheduling problem.     

Minimization of maximum tardiness on unrelated parallel machines with process restrictions and setups

We consider the problem of scheduling N jobs on M unrelated parallel machines to minimize maximum tardiness. Each job has a due date and requires a single stage of processing. A setup for dies is incurred if the type of the job scheduled is different from the previous one on that machine. For each die type, the number of dies is restricted. Because of the mechanical structure of the machines and the fitness of dies to each machine, the processing time depends on both the job and the machine. In this paper, an efficient heuristic based on guided search, record-to-record travel, and tabu lists is presented to minimize maximum tardiness. Computational characteristics of the proposed heuristic are evaluated through extensive experiments, which show that the proposed heuristic outperforms a simulated annealing method tested and is able to prescribe the optimal solutions for problems in small scales.     

Genetic algorithms for minimizing makespan in a flow shop with two capacitated batch processing machines

This paper considers a flow shop with two batch processing machines. The processing times of the job and their sizes are given. The batch processing machines can process multiple jobs simultaneously in a batch as long as the total size of all the jobs in a batch does not exceed its capacity. When the jobs are grouped into batches, the processing time of the batch is defined by the longest processing job in the batch. Batch processing machines are expensive and a bottleneck. Consequently, the objective is to minimize the makespan (or maximize the machine utilization). The scheduling problem under study is NP-hard, hence, a genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed. The effectiveness (in terms of solution quality and run time) of the GA approach is compared with a simulated annealing approach, a heuristic, and a commercial solver which was used to solve a mixed-integer formulation of the problem. Experimental study indicates that the GA approach outperforms the other approaches by reporting better solution.     

A hybrid particle swarm optimization for parallel machine total tardiness scheduling

The parallel machine scheduling problem has received increasing attention in recent years. This research considers the problem of scheduling jobs on parallel machines with a total tardiness objective. In the view of its non-deterministic polynomial-time hard nature, the particle swarm optimization (PSO), which is inspired by the swarming or collaborative behavior of biological populations, is employed to solve the parallel machine total tardiness problem (PMTP). Since it is very hard to directly apply standard PSO to this problem, a new solution representation is designed based on real number encoding, which can conveniently convert the job sequences of PMTP to continuous position values. Moreover, in order to enhance the performance of PSO, we introduce clonal selection algorithm (CSA) into PSO and therefore propose a new CSPSO method. The incorporation of CSA can greatly improve the swarm diversity and avoid premature convergence. We further investigate three parameters of PSO and CSPSO, finding that the parameters have marginal impact on CSPSO, which indicates that CSPSO is a very stable and robust method. The performance of CSPSO is evaluated in comparison with traditional genetic algorithm (GA) and standard PSO on 250 benchmark instances. Experimental results show that CSPSO significantly outperforms GA and PSO, with obtaining the optimal solutions of 237 instances. Additionally, PSO appears more effective than GA.     

A study of the flexible job shop scheduling problem with parallel machines and reentrant process

This paper develops a scheduling algorithm for the job shop scheduling problem with parallel machines and reentrant process. This algorithm includes two major modules: the machine selection module (MSM) and the operation scheduling module (OSM). An order has several jobs and each job has several operations in a hierarchical structure. The MSM helps an operation to select one of the parallel machines to process it. The OSM is then used to schedule the sequences and the timing of all operations assigned to each machine. A real-life weapons production factory is used as a case study to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Due to the high penalty of delays in military orders, the on-time delivery rate is the most important performance measure and then makespan is the next most important measure. Well-known performance measures in the scheduling literature, such as maximum lateness and average tardiness, are also evaluated. The simulation results demonstrate that the MSM and OSM using the combination of earliest due date (EDD), the operations’ lowest level code (LLC) of the bill of materials (BOM), and the longest processing time (LPT) outperforms the other scheduling methods.     

Minimization of maximum tardiness on unrelated parallel machines with process restrictions and setups

We consider the problem of schedulingN jobs onM unrelated parallel machines to minimize maximum tardiness. Each job has a due date and requires a single stage of processing. A setup for dies is incurred if the type of the job scheduled is different from the previous one on that machine. For each die type, the number of dies is restricted. Because of the mechanical structure of the machines and the fitness of dies to each machine, the processing time depends on both the job and the machine. In this paper, an efficient heuristic based on guided search, record-to-record travel, and tabu lists is presented to minimize maximum tardiness. Computational characteristics of the proposed heuristic are evaluated through extensive experiments, which show that the proposed heuristic outperforms a simulated annealing method tested and is able to prescribe the optimal solutions for problems in small scales.     

Mathematical model and parallel genetic algorithm for hybrid flexible flowshop lot streaming problem

Lot streaming is the technique of splitting a given job into sublots to allow the overlapping of successive operations in multi-stage manufacturing systems thereby reducing production makespan. Several research articles appeared in literature to solve this problem and most of these studies are limited to pure flowshop environments where there is only a single machine in each stage. On the other hand, because of the applicability of hybrid flowshops in different manufacturing settings, the scheduling of these types of shops is also extensively studied by several authors. However, the issue of lot streaming in hybrid flowshop environment is not well studied. In this paper, we aim to contribute in bridging the gap between the research efforts in flowshop lot streaming and hybrid flowshop scheduling. We propose a mathematical model and a genetic algorithm for the lot streaming problem of several jobs in multi-stage flowshops where at each stage there are unrelated parallel machines. The jobs may skip some of the stages, and therefore, the considered system is a complex generalized flowshop. The proposed genetic algorithm is executed on both sequential and parallel computing platforms. Numerical examples showed that the parallel implementation greatly improved the computational performance of the developed heuristic.     

Scheduling algorithms for two-stage reentrant hybrid flow shops: minimizing makespan under the maximum allowable due dates

We consider the scheduling problem in hybrid flow shops that consist of two stages in series, each of which has multiple identical parallel machines. Each job has reentrant flow, i.e., the job visits each production stage several times. The problem is to determine the allocation of jobs to machines as well as the sequence of the jobs assigned to each machine for the objective of minimizing makespan subject to the maximum allowable due dates in the form of a constraint set with a certain allowance. To solve the problem, two types of algorithms are suggested: (a) a branch and bound algorithm that gives optimal semi-permutation schedules; and (b) heuristic algorithms that give non-permutation schedules. To show their performances, computational experiments were done on a number of test problems and the results are reported. In particular, one of the heuristics is competitive to the branch and bound algorithm with respect to the solution quality while requiring much shorter computation times.     

Scheduling on unrelated parallel machines with sequence- and machine-dependent setup times and due-date constraints

We consider the unrelated parallel-machine scheduling problem with sequence- and machine-dependent setup times and due-date constraints. There are N jobs, each having a due date and requiring a single operation on one of the M machines. A setup is required if there is a switch from processing one type of job to another. Due to the characteristics of machines, the processing time depends upon the job and machine on which the job is processed, and the setup time is sequence and machine dependent. In addition, certain jobs have strict due-date constraints. An effective heuristic based on a modified apparent-tardiness-cost-with-setup procedure, the simulated annealing method, and designed improvement procedures is proposed to minimize the total tardiness of this scheduling problem. Computational characteristics of the proposed heuristic are evaluated through an extensive experiment using a newly created data set. Computational results show that the proposed heuristic is able to effectively improve the initial solutions, obtained by a modified apparent-tardiness-cost-with-setup procedure, and obtains better results than a random descent heuristic.     

基于工件聚类的并行机调度算法及其应用

针对纺织生产广泛存在的带工件释放时间、以最小化总拖期工件数和总拖期时间为目标的大规模并行机调度问题，提出一种基于工件聚类的遗传算法。该算法将求解过程分为工件聚类和工件排序两个阶段。在工件聚类阶段，基于影响并行机调度性能的重要调度特征量，采用改进的模糊C-均值聚类方法将所有待上机工件分为多个聚类；在工件排序阶段，采用基于规则编码的遗传算法，优化各聚类内工件的加工顺序。数值计算结果及实际应用效果表明，所提出的算法适用于求解带工件释放时间的大规模并行机调度问题。     

Developing two multi-objective evolutionary algorithms for the multi-objective flexible job shop scheduling problem

The aim of this paper is to study multi-objective flexible job shop scheduling problem (MOFJSP). Flexible job shop scheduling problem is a modified version of job shop scheduling problem (JSP) in which an operation is allowed to be processed by any machine from a given set of capable machines. The objectives that are considered in this study are makespan, critical machine work load, and total work load of machines. In the literature of the MOFJSP, since this problem is known as an NP-hard problem, most of the studies have developed metaheuristic algorithms to solve it. Most of them have integrated their objective functions and used an integrated single-objective metaheuristic algorithm though. In this study, two new version of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms including non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm and non-dominated ranking genetic algorithm are adapted for MOFJSP. These algorithms use new multi-objective Pareto-based modules instead of multi-criteria concepts to guide their process. Another contribution of this paper is introducing of famous metrics of the multi-objective evaluation to literature of the MOFJSP. A new measure is also proposed. Finally, through using numerous test problems, calculating a number of measures, performing different statistical tests, and plotting different types of figures, it is shown that proposed algorithms are at least as good as literature’s algorithm.     

A scheduling model for serial jobs on parallel machines with different preventive maintenance (PM)

In factories during production, preventive maintenance (PM) scheduling is an important problem in preventing and predicting the failure of machines, and most other critical tasks. In this paper, we present a new method of PM scheduling in two modes for more precise and better machine maintenance, as pieces must be replaced or be repaired. Because of the importance of this problem, we define multi-objective functions including makespan, PM cost, variance tardiness, and variance cost; we also consider multi-parallel series machines that perform multiple jobs on each machine and an aid, the analytic network process, to weight these objectives and their alternatives. PM scheduling is an NP-hard problem, so we use a dynamic genetic algorithm (GA) (the probability of mutation and crossover is changed through the main GA) to solve our algorithm and present another heuristic model (particle swarm optimization) algorithm against which to compare the GA’s answer. At the end, a numerical example shows that the presented method is very useful in implementing and maintaining machines and devices.     

A genetic-algorithm-based optimization model for scheduling flexible assembly lines

In this paper, a scheduling problem in the flexible assembly line (FAL) is investigated. The mathematical model for this problem is presented with the objectives of minimizing the weighted sum of tardiness and earliness penalties and balancing the production flow of the FAL, which considers flexible operation assignments. A bi-level genetic algorithm is developed to solve the scheduling problem. In this algorithm, a new chromosome representation is presented to tackle the operation assignment by assigning one operation to multiple machines as well as assigning multiple operations to one machine. Furthermore, a heuristic initialization process and modified genetic operators are proposed. The proposed optimization algorithm is validated using two sets of real production data. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed optimization model can solve the scheduling problem effectively.