Flexible job shop scheduling problem by chemical-reaction optimization algorithm

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel discrete chemical-reaction optimization (DCRO) algorithm for solving the flexible job shop scheduling problem with three objectives. The molecule is used to represent a solution. The four elementary reactions, i.e., the on-wall ineffective collision, the decomposition, the inter-molecular ineffective collision, and the synthesis, are used as the operators for the hybrid algorithm. In the hybrid algorithm, the crossover operator is embedded to learn information among molecules. To increase the ability to escape from the local optima, the buffer is used as the energy center to share kinetic energy among molecules. Experimental results on the well-known benchmarks show the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.