Improved sheep flock heredity algorithm and artificial bee colony algorithm for scheduling m-machine flow shops lot streaming with equal size sub-lot problems

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to develop intelligent search heuristics to solve n-jobs, m-machines lot streaming problem in a flow shop with equal size sub-lots where the objective is to minimise makespan and total flow time independently. Improved sheep flock heredity algorithm (ISFHA) and artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithms are applied to the problem above mentioned. The performance of these algorithms is evaluated against the algorithms reported in the literature. The computational analysis shows the better performance of ISFHA and ABC algorithms.

Keywords:

• flow shop scheduling
• lot streaming
• equal size sub-lots
• improved sheep flock heredity algorithm
• artificial bee colony algorithm

Acknowledgements

The authors are pleased to thank the editors and anonymous referees for their suggestions and constructive comments which appreciably improved the quality of this paper.