A novel approach for no-wait flow-shop scheduling problem with hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA)

Pervaiz Iqbala,* and P.S. Sehik Udumanb

A novel approach for no-wait flow-shop scheduling problem with hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA)

Authors :

Pervaiz Iqbal^a,* and P.S. Sehik Uduman^b

Author Address :

^a,bDepartment of Mathematics and Actuarial Science, B. S. Abdur Rahman University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.

*Corresponding author.

Abstract :

No-wait flowshop scheduling problem (NWFSSP) is a constrained for flowshop scheduling problem that exists widely in manufacturing field. Such problems are NP-hard and hence the optimal solutions are not guaranteed. In this paper, a hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) methodology is proposed to solve the no-wait flowshop scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing the makespan, for a number of jobs to be processed on a number of machines using a spreadsheet based genetic algorithm. This technique hybridizes the genetic algorithm and a novel local search scheme to generate population of initial chromosomes and also improve the operators of genetic algorithm (GA). The present approach is compared with existing literature for the efficiency of this method which performs better working solutions. Additionally, it is also shown that any objective function can be minimized with the same model without changing the logic of GA routine.