A GA/TS algorithm for the stage shop scheduling problem

This paper presents a special case of the general shop called stage shop problem. The stage shop is a more realistic generalization of the mixed shop problem. In the stage shop problem, each job has several stages of operations. In order to solve the stage shop problem with makespan objective function, an existing neighborhood of job shop is used. In this neighborhood, few enhanced conditions are proposed to prevent cycle generation. In addition, a new neighborhood for operations that belong to the same job is presented. These neighborhoods are applied to the stage shop problem in a tabu search framework. A genetic algorithm is used to obtain good initial solutions. An existing lower bound of the job shop is adapted to our problem and the computational results have been compared to it. Our algorithm has reached the optimal solutions for more than half of the problem instances. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.