An improved cuckoo search algorithm for parallel machine scheduling

Abstract

This paper proposes a cuckoo search-based algorithm (CSA) to minimize makespan for identical parallel machine scheduling problems. Job permutation schedules are used to implement CSA for this problem. We present a heuristic approach based on mod function to convert a continuous position in CSA into discrete permutation schedule for obtaining a cuckoo by Levy flights. Empirical results with a large number of randomly generated benchmark problem instances demonstrate that the proposed method produces solutions that are fairly superior to that of two state-of-the-art algorithms in the literature.