Title: An adaptive penalty guided genetic algorithm for scheduling parallel batch processing machines

Authors: Shubin Xu

Addresses: College of Business and Management, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL 60625, USA

Abstract: We study the problem of scheduling a set of jobs with non-identical capacity requirements on parallel non-identical batch processing machines to minimise the makespan. We formulate the problem as a nonlinear integer programming model. Given that this problem is NP-hard, we propose a genetic algorithm to heuristically solve it. An adaptive penalty is combined to guide the search process to explore promising feasible and infeasible regions. Random problem instances were generated to test the approach with respect to solution quality and run time. Computational results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Keywords: scheduling; parallel machines; batch processing machines; makespan; mathematical programming; heuristics; genetic algorithms; penalty function.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAMS.2018.093784

International Journal of Applied Management Science, 2018 Vol.10 No.3, pp.247 - 268

Received: 04 Apr 2017
Accepted: 16 May 2017

Published online: 06 Aug 2018 *

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