Simulated imperialist competitive algorithm in two-stage assembly flow shop with machine breakdowns and preventive maintenance

This article deals with the two-stage assembly flow shop problem considering preventive maintenance activities and machine breakdowns. The objective is to minimize the makespan. This problem is proven to be NP-hard; thus, we proposed two meta-heuristic algorithms, namely, imperialist competitive algorithm and genetic algorithm, to obtain solutions of the problem. This article describes an approach incorporating simulation with imperialist competitive algorithm for the scheduling purpose having machine breakdowns and preventive maintenance activities. The results obtained are analyzed using Taguchi experimental design, and the parameters of proposed algorithms are calibrated by artificial neural network. The computational results demonstrate that imperialist competitive algorithm is statistically better than genetic algorithm in quality of solution and reaches to better solutions at the same computational time.