A particle swarm optimisation for the no-wait flow shop problem with due date constraints

Abstract

This paper considers the no-wait flow shop scheduling problem with due date constraints. In the no-wait flow shop problem, waiting time is not allowed between successive operations of jobs. Moreover, a due date is associated with the completion of each job. The considered objective function is makespan. This problem is proved to be strongly NP-Hard. In this paper, a particle swarm optimisation (PSO) is developed to deal with the problem. Moreover, the effect of some dispatching rules for generating initial solutions are studied. A Taguchi-based design of experience approach has been followed to determine the effect of the different values of the parameters on the performance of the algorithm. To evaluate the performance of the proposed PSO, a large number of benchmark problems are selected from the literature and solved with different due date and penalty settings. Computational results confirm that the proposed PSO is efficient and competitive; the developed framework is able to improve many of the best-known solutions of the test problems available in the literature.

Keywords:

• flow shop scheduling
• no-wait
• due date constraints
• makespan
• particle swarm optimisation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees for their precious comments that helped with improving the quality of this paper.

Notes

1. Beasley, J.E. OR-Library: distributing test problems by electronic mail. July 2009 [cited 2014 March]; Available from: http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~mastjjb/jeb/info.html.