Title: Discrete particle swarm optimisation algorithms for minimising the completion-time variance of jobs in flowshops

Authors: K. Rameshkumar, Chandrasekharan Rajendran, K.M. Mohanasundaram

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Ettimadai, Coimbatore 641 105, Tamilnadu, India. ' Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600 036, Tamilnadu, India. ' Jansons Institute of Technology, Coimbatore 641 659, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract: In this paper, the problem of scheduling in the permutation flowshop scheduling problem is considered with the objective of minimising the completion-time variance of jobs (CTV). Two particle swarm optimisation algorithms (PSOAs) are proposed and analysed. The first PSOA is inspired from the solution construction procedures that are used in ant colony optimisation algorithms. The second algorithm is a newly developed one. The proposed algorithms are applied to a set of benchmark flowshop scheduling problems, and performances of the algorithms are evaluated by comparing the obtained results with the results published in the literature. The performance analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms in solving the permutation flowshop sequencing problem with the CTV objective.

Keywords: flowshop scheduling; flowshops; completion-time variance; particle swarm optimisation; algorithms; ACO; ant colony optimisation; job completion; solution construction; benchmarks; industrial engineering; systems engineering.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2011.038982

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2011 Vol.7 No.3, pp.317 - 340

Published online: 31 Jan 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article