Scheduling a single batch-processing machine with arbitrary job sizes and incompatible job families: An ant colony framework

A H Kashan and B Karimi ()
Additional contact information
A H Kashan: Amirkabir University of Technology
B Karimi: Amirkabir University of Technology

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2008, vol. 59, issue 9, 1269-1280

Abstract: Abstract This paper investigates the first attempt on the batch-processing machine scheduling problem, where the machine can process multiple jobs simultaneously, using an ant colony optimization metaheuristic. We consider the scheduling problem of a single batch-processing machine with incompatible job families and the performance measure of minimizing total weighted completion time. Jobs of a given family have an identical processing time and are characterized by arbitrary sizes and weights. Based on a number of developed heuristic approaches, we propose an ant colony framework (ACF) in two versions, which are distinguished by the type of embedded heuristic information. Each version is also investigated in two formats, that is the pure ACF and the hybridized ACF. To verify the performance of our framework, comparisons are made based on using a set of well-known existing heuristic and meta-heuristic algorithms taken from the literature, on a diverse set of artificially generated test problem instances. Computational results show the high performance of the proposed framework and signify its ability to outperform the comparator algorithms in most cases as the problem size increases.

Keywords: scheduling; batch-processing machine; total weighted completion time; ant colony optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602448 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:59:y:2008:i:9:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2602448

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... search/journal/41274

DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602448

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Operational Research Society is currently edited by Tom Archibald and Jonathan Crook

More articles in Journal of the Operational Research Society from Palgrave Macmillan, The OR Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().