Title: A satisfactory multi-agent single-machine considering a cross-docking terminal

Authors: Mohammadbagher Afshar-Bakeshloo; Fariborz Jolai; Mostafa Mazinani; Reza Tavakkoli-Moghaddam

Addresses: School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran ' School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran ' School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran ' School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: This study addresses a two-agent single-machine scheduling problem; whose objectives are to maximise the agents' service levels regarding their desired time windows. This is a new variant of multi-agent scheduling problems that agents' time windows are taken into account. Proposing a dashboard to determine optimal sequences of the jobs is essential since all the jobs are characterised by unequal release dates, due dates, and deadlines. Employing this dashboard, the decision maker tries to provide a schedule based on a specific level of services for each agent. A cross-dock terminal with multiinbound door and one-outbound door is an excellent example of the proposed model. Here, the dispatcher schedules the jobs so that each agent gets a predetermined level of satisfaction. This problem is formulated with a mixedinteger linear programming model considering a piecewise linear function. The results show that the multi-objective imperialist competitive algorithm (MOICA) performs better than NSGA-II and MOIWO.

Keywords: multi-agent single-machine scheduling; tardiness; time window; customer satisfaction; MOICA; cross-dock terminal.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSE.2019.104164

International Journal of System of Systems Engineering, 2019 Vol.9 No.4, pp.307 - 330

Received: 24 Oct 2018
Accepted: 02 Mar 2019
Published online: 20 Dec 2019 *

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