Title: Multi-objective flexible job shop scheduling using hybrid differential evolution algorithm

Authors: G. Balaraju; Sriram Venkatesh; B. Siva Prasad Reddy

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College of Engineering, Osmania University, Hyderabad-500007, Andhra Pradesh, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College of Engineering, Osmania University, Hyderabad-500007, Andhra Pradesh, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Warangal – 506004, Andhra Pradesh, India

Abstract: The authors addressed multi objective flexible job shop scheduling problems using hybrid differential evolution algorithm for minimisation of makespan, total machine load and critical machine load. The differential evolution algorithm is a stochastic-based adaptive scheme used for global optimisation over continuous space and to apply it for flexible job shop scheduling problem a suitable encoding mechanism is required. In this work random keys encoding mechanism is used to generate schedules that deals with floating point vectors. A non-dominated sorting algorithm is used to find the set of non-dominated solutions for the given scheduling problem. The proposed approach is extensively tested on a set of standard flexible job shop scheduling instances reported in the literature and it is found that the proposed algorithm is performing well on all the test problems.

Keywords: flexible scheduling; job shop scheduling; hybrid differential evolution; random keys encoding; multi-objective optimisation; non-dominated sorting algorithm.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMS.2014.062436

International Journal of Internet Manufacturing and Services, 2014 Vol.3 No.3, pp.226 - 243

Received: 16 Mar 2013
Accepted: 31 Jul 2013
Published online: 30 Jun 2014 *

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