Flexible job shop scheduling under condition-based maintenance: Improved version of imperialist competitive algorithm

Maintenance activities have been ignored in many studies on scheduling problems where all machines are assumed to be available without interruption in the planning horizon. However, in realistic situations, they might be unavailable due to preventive maintenance, basic maintenance or unforeseen breakdowns. In this paper, we simulate a condition-based maintenance (CBM) for flexible job shop scheduling problem (FJSP) and consider the combination of Sigmoid function and Gaussian distribution to improve the CBM simulation. This study proposes an improved imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) for the FJSP scheduling problem with the objective of the makespan minimization. The performance of the proposed algorithm is enhanced with a hybridization of ICA with simulated annealing (SA), after diagnosing standard ICA disadvantages and shortcomings. This ICA also includes a simulation part to handle CBM requirements. Various parameters of the novel ICA are reviewed to calibrate the algorithm with the help of the Taguchi experimental design. Experimental results show the high performance of the novel ICA in comparison with the standard ICA. The obtained results demonstrate that the novel ICA is an effective algorithm for FJSP under CBM. Finally, the performance of ICA is evaluated compared to other popular algorithms. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.