Solving a Bi-criteria Scheduling Problem of cellular Flowshop with Sequence Dependent Setup Times

Abstract

This paper addresses a bi-criteria optimization problem to minimize total flow time and makespan simultaneously for a cellular flowshop with Sequence Dependent Setup Times (FMCSP with SDSTs); A multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MPSO) and a Multi-objective Simulated Annealing (MOSA) Algorithm are proposed to solve the proposed problem. furthermore, an improved algorithm (named as IMPSO-TA), where MPSO is combined with Threshold Acceptance (TA) algorithm to improve the convergence of the obtained Pareto Fronts. The proposed algorithms are evaluated using several Quality Indicators (QI) measures for multi-objective optimization problems. Results showed that proposed algorithms can generate approximated Pareto Fronts in a reasonable CPU time. Furthermore, quality of Pareto fronts generated by IMPSO-TA is better than Pareto fronts found by MPSO and MOSA based on the test problems that are used in this research at the cost of CPU time. Further, the proposed IMPSO-TA performs as best available algorithms in the literature for small and medium test problems with a very minor deviation for best results for large test problems.