A hybrid electromagnetism-like algorithm for two-stage assembly flow shop scheduling problem

This paper presents a study on the two-stage assembly flow shop scheduling problem for minimising the weighed sum of maximum makespan, earliness and lateness. There are m machines at the first stage, each of which produces a component of a job. A single machine at the second stage assembles the m components together to complete the job. A novel model for solving the scheduling problem is built to optimise the maximum makespan, earliness and lateness simultaneously. Two optimal operation sequences of jobs are determined and verified. As the problem is known to be NP-hard, a hybrid variable neighbourhood search - electromagnetism-like mechanism (VNS-EM) algorithm is proposed for its handling. To search beyond local optima for a global one, VNS algorithm is embedded in each iteration of EM, whereby the fine neighbourhood search of optimum individuals can be realised and the solution is thus optimised. Simulation results show that the proposed hybrid VNS-EM algorithm outperforms the EM and VNS algorithms in both average value and standard deviation.