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Ant Colony Optimisation Applied To Job Shop Scheduling Problem
Ant Colony Optimisation Applied To Job Shop Scheduling Problem
SCHEDULING PROBLEM
Bachelor of Technology
in
Mechanical Engineering
By
DEBASISH DAS
2009
National Institute of Technology
Rourkela
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the thesis entitled.”ACO applied to job shop scheduling problem”
submitted by Mr. Debasish Das in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of
Rourkela (Deemed University) is an authentic work carried out by him under my guidance.
To the best of my knowledge the matter embodied in the thesis has not been submitted to any
Rourkela-769008
Acknowledgement
I would like to express my deep sense of gratitude and respect to our supervisor Prof.
B.B.Biswal, for his excellent guidance, suggestions and constructive criticism. I consider
ourselves extremely lucky to be able to work under the guidance of such a dynamic personality.
I am also thankful to Prof K.P. Maity and Prof. P.J. Rath (Project Coordinators) for smooth
completion of the project curriculum. I extend my gratitude to all staff members of Department
Lastly we would like to render heartiest thanks to our M.Tech students(ME) whose ever helping
Debasish Das
CONTENTS
flexible job shop scheduling production system (FJSP). In most of its practical formulations, the
FJSP is known to be NP-hard,so exact solution methods are unfeasible for most problem
instances and heuristic approaches must therefore be employed to find good solutions with
reasonable search time. In this paper, two closely related approaches to the resolution of the
flexible job shop scheduling production system are described. These approaches combine the
Ant system optimisation meta-heuristic (AS) with local search methods, including tabu search.
Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a metaheuristic inspired by the foraging behavior of ants,
which has been used to solve combinatorial optimization problems and the Ant System (AS) was
In the classical Job Shop Scheduling Problem, a finite number of jobs are to be processed by a
finite number of machines. Each job consists of a predetermined sequence of operations, which
will be processed without interruptions by a period of time in each machine. The operations that
correspond to the same job will be processed according to their technological sequence and none
of them will be able to begin its processing before the precedent operation has finished. A
job shop constraints. A makespan is defined as the maximum completion time of all jobs. The
Modern hybrid heuristics are by their nature non-exhaustive, and so there is often scope for
different approaches to better previous solution methods according to the execution speed or the
quality of feasible solutions. Traditional approaches to resolve the FJSP are as varied as the
different formulations of the problem, but include fast, simple heuristics [2][12], tabu search
[15], evolutionary approaches [5] and modern hybrid meta-heuristics that consolidate the
advantages of various different approaches [1][13]. The ant colony optimisation (ACO) was
described by Dorigo in his PhD thesis [6] and was inspired by the ability and the organisation of
real ant colony using external chemical pheromone trails acting as a means of communication.
Ant system algorithms have since been widely employed on the NP-hard combinatorial
Optimisation problems including problems related to Continuous Design Spaces research [4],
and job shop scheduling [16]. However, they have not previously been applied to the FJSP
described in what follows. Local search methods encompass many optimisation approaches and
have been shown that the efficiency of their use with an ant system approach [7]. The approach
described in this paper for the FJSP shows the quality of solutions found, using benchmark
problems. The performances of the proposed approach are evaluated and compared with the
results obtained from other methods. In this paper, an application of the ant system algorithms
combined by the tabu search heuristic is proposed for solving the FJSP. Thus, The FJSP is
described and formulated in section 2. Then, in section 3, The suggested approach by ACO with
the tabu search is described. An illustrative example is given in section 4. The last section will be
devoted to the presentation of some results and some conclusions relating to this research work.
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE SURVEY
Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a paradigm for designing metaheuristic algorithms for
combinatorial optimization problems. The first algorithm which can be classified within this
framework was presented in 1991 and, since then, many diverse variants of the basic principle
have been reported in the literature. The essential trait of ACO algorithms is the combination of a
priori information about the structure of a promising solution with a posteriori information about
the structure of previously obtained good solutions. Metaheuristic algorithms are algorithms
which, in order to escape from local optima, drive some basic heuristic: either a constructive
heuristic starting from a null solution and adding elements to build a good complete one, or a
local search heuristic starting from a complete solution and iteratively modifying some of its
elements in order to achieve a better one. The metaheuristic part permits the lowlevel
heuristic to obtain solutions better than those it could have achieved alone, even if iterated.
Usually, the controlling mechanism is achieved either by constraining or by randomizing the set
of local neighbor solutions to consider in local search (as is the case of simulated annealing or
tabu search), or by combining elements taken by different solutions (as is the case of evolution
strategies and genetic or bionomic algorithms). The characteristic of ACO algorithms is their
explicit use of elements of previous solutions. In fact, they drive a constructive low-level
solution, as GRASP [30] does, but including it in a population framework and randomizing the
construction in a Monte Carlo way. A Monte Carlo combination of different solution elements is
suggested also by Genetic Algorithms, but in the case of ACO the probability distribution is
can be designed in different ways, facing a trade-off between the specificity of the information
used for the conditioning and the number of solutions which need to be constructed before
effectively biasing the probability distribution to favor the emergence of good solutions.
Different applications have favored either the use of conditioning at the level of decision
variables, thus requiring a huge number of iterations before getting a precise distribution, or the
computational efficiency, thus using very coarse conditioning information. The chapter is
structured as follows. Section 2 describes the common elements of the heuristics following the
ACO paradigm and outlines some of the variants proposed. Section 3 presents the application of
ACO algorithms to a number of different combinatorial optimization problems and it ends with a
wider overview of the problem attacked by means of ACO up to now. Section 4 outlines the
most significant theoretical results so far published about convergence properties of ACO
variants.
The importance of the original Ant System (AS) resides mainly in being the prototype of a
number of ant algorithms which collectively implement the ACO paradigm. AS already follows
the outline presented in the previous subsection, specifying its elements as follows. The move
probability distribution defines probabilities pιψk to be equal to 0 for all moves which are
infeasible (i.e., they are in the tabu list of ant k, that is a list containing all moves which are
infeasible for ants k starting from state ι), otherwise they are computed by means of formula
and attractiveness, respectively. After each iteration t of the algorithm, i.e., when all ants have
where Δτιψ represents the sum of the contributions of all ants that used move (ιψ) to construct
represents the sum of the contributions of all ants that used move (ιψ) to construct their solution.
The ants’ contributions are proportional to the quality of the solutions achieved, i.e., the better
solution is, the higher will be the trail contributions added to the moves it used. For example, in
the case of the TSP, moves correspond to arcs of the graph, thus state ι could correspond to a
path ending in node i, the state ψ to the same path but with the arc (ij) added at the end and the
move would be the traversal of arc (ij). The quality of the solution of ant k would be the length
Lk of the tour found by the ant and formula (5.2) would become τij(t)=ρ τij(t-1)+Δτij , with
where m is the number of ants and k Δτ ij is the amount of trail laid on edge (ij) by ant k, which
can be computed as
The ant system simply iterates a main loop where m ants construct in parallel their solutions,
thereafter updating the trail levels. The performance of the algorithm depends on the correct
tuning of several parameters, namely: α, β, relative importance of trail and attractiveness, ρ, trail
persistence, τij(0), initial trail level, m, number of ants, and Q, used for defining to be of high
1. {Initialization}
Initialize τιψ and ηιψ, ∀ (ιψ).
2. {Construction}
For each ant k (currently in state ι) do
repeat
choose in probability the state to move into.
append the chosen move to the k-th ant's set tabuk.
until ant k has completed its solution.
end for
3. {Trail update}
For each ant move (ιψ) do
compute Δτιψ
update the trail matrix.
end for
4. {Terminating condition}
If not(end test) go to step 2
AS was the first algorithm inspired by real ants behavior. AS was initially applied to the solution
of the traveling salesman problem but was not able to compete against the state-of-the art
algorithms in the field. On the other hand he has the merit to introduce ACO algorithms and to
show the potentiality of using artificial pheromone and artificial ants to drive the search of
always better solutions for complex optimization problems. The next researches were motivated
by two goals: the first was to improve the performance of the algorithm and the second was to
investigate and better explain its behavior. Gambardella and Dorigo proposed in 1995 the Ant-Q
algorithm, an extension of AS which integrates some ideas from Q-learning, and in 1996 Ant
Colony System (ACS) a simplified version of Ant-Q which maintained approximately the same
Since ACS is the base of many algorithms defined in the following years we focus the attention
on ACS other than Ant-Q. ACS differs from the previous AS because of three main aspects:
Pheromone
In ACS once all ants have computed their tour (i.e. at the end of each iteration) AS updates the
pheromone trail using all the solutions produced by the ant colony. Each edge belonging to one
value. At the end of this phase the pheromone of the entire system evaporates and the process of
construction and update is iterated. On the contrary, in ACS only the best solution computed
since the beginning of the computation is used to globally update the pheromone. As was the
case in AS, global updating is intended to increase the attractiveness of promising route but ACS
mechanism is more effective since it avoids long convergence time by directly concentrate the
search in a neighborhood of the best tour found up to the current iteration of the algorithm.
In ACS, the final evaporation phase is substituted by a local updating of the pheromone applied
during the construction phase. Each time an ant moves from the current city to the next the
⋅ τ 0 where 0 ≤ ρ ≤ 1 is a parameter (usually set at 0.9) and τ0 is the initial pheromone value. τ0
is defined as τ0=(n·Lnn)-1, where Lnn is the tour length produced by the execution of one ACS
iteration without the pheromone component (this is equivalent to a probabilistic nearest neighbor
heuristic). The effect of local-updating is to make the desirability of edges change dynamically:
every time an ant uses an edge this becomes slightly less desirable and only for the edges which
never belonged to a global best tour the pheromone remains τ0. An interesting property of these
local and global updating mechanisms is that the pheromone τij(t) of each edge is inferior limited
by τ0. A similar approach was proposed with the Max-Min-AS that explicitly introduces lower
During the construction of a new solution the state transition rule is the phase where each ant
decides which is the next state to move to. In ACS a new state transition rule called pseudo-
proportional action choice rule typically used in Ant System. With the pseudo-random rule the
chosen state is the best with probability q0 (exploitation) while a random state is chosen with
probability 1-q0 (exploration). Using the AS random-proportional rule the next state is chosen
randomly with a probability distribution depending on ηij and τij. The ACS pseudo-random-
proportional state transition rule provides a direct way to balance between exploration of new
states and exploitation of a priori and accumulated knowledge. The best state is chosen with
probability q0 (that is a parameter 0 ≤ q0 ≤ 1 usually fixed to 0.9) and with probability (1-q0) the
next state is chosen randomly with a probability distribution based on ηij and τ ij weighted by
5.2.3 ANTS
ANTS is an extension of the AS, which specifies some underdefined elements of the general
algorithm, such as the attractiveness function to use or the initialization of the trail distribution.
This turns out to be a variation of the general ACO framework that makes the resulting algorithm
similar in structure to tree search algorithms. In fact, the essential trait which distinguishes
ANTS from a tree search algorithm is the lack of a complete backtracking mechanism, which is
we will outline two distinctive elements of the ANTS algorithm within the ACO framework,
Attractiveness
The attractiveness of a move can be effectively estimated by means of lower bounds (upper
bounds in the case of maximization problems) on the cost of the completion of a partial solution.
bound on the cost of a complete solution containing ι. Therefore, for each feasible move ι,ψ, it is
possible to compute the lower bound on the cost of a complete solution containing ψ: the lower
the bound the better the move. Since a large part of research in ACO is devoted to the
identification of tight lower bounds for the different problems of interest, good lower bounds are
usually available. When the bound value becomes greater than the current upper bound, it is
obvious that the considered move leads to a partial solution which cannot be completed into a
solution better than the current best one. The move can therefore be discarded from further
analysis. A further advantage of lower bounds is that in many cases the values of the decision
variables, as appearing in the bound solution, can be used as an indication of whether each
variable will appear in good solutions. This provides an effective way of initializing the trail
values.
Trail update
A good trail updating mechanism avoids stagnation, the undesirable situation in which all ants
repeatedly construct the same solutions making any further exploration in the search process
impossible. Stagnation derives from an excessive trail level on the moves of one solution, and
can be observed in advanced phases of the search process, if parameters are not well tuned to the
problem. The trail updating procedure evaluates each solution against the last k solutions
globally constructed by ANTS. As soon as k solutions are available, their moving average z is
computed; each new solution zcurr is compared with z (and then used to compute the new
moving average value). If zcurr is lower than z , the trail level of the last solution's moves is
where z is the average of the last k solutions and LB is a lower bound on the optimal problem
solution cost. The use of a dynamic scaling procedure permits discrimination of a small
achievement in the latest stage of search, while avoiding focusing the search only around good
achievement in the earliest stages. One of the most difficult aspects to be considered in
metaheuristic algorithms is the trade-off between exploration and exploitation. To obtain good
results, an agent should prefer actions that it has tried in the past and found to be effective in
producing desirable solutions (exploitation); but to discover them, it has to try actions not
exclusively without failing in the task: for this reason, the ANTS algorithm integrates the
stagnation avoidance procedure to facilitate exploration with the probability definition
repeat
2.3 append the chosen move to the k-th ant’s tabu list
end for
It can be noted that the general structure of the ANTS algorithm is closely akin to that of a
standard tree search procedure. At each stage we have in fact a partial solution which is
expanded by branching on all possible offspring; a bound is then computed for each offspring,
possibly fathoming dominated ones, and the current partial solution is selected from among those
associated to the surviving offspring on the basis of lower bound considerations. By simply
adding backtracking and eliminating the MonteCarlo choice of the node to move to, we revert to
a standard branch and bound procedure. An ANTS code can therefore be easily turned into
an exact procedure.
Ant Colony System: A Cooperative Learning Approach to the Traveling
Salesman Problem
The state transition rule used by ant system, called a random-proportional rule, is given by (1),
which gives the probability with which ant K in city R chooses to move to the city S.
set of cities that remain to be visited by ant k positioned on city r (to make the solution feasible),
and is a parameter which determines the relative importance of pheromone versus distance .
In (1) we multiply the pheromone on edge (r,s) by the corresponding heuristic value .
In this way we favor the choice of edges which are shorter and which have a greater amount of
pheromone. In ant system, the global updating rule is implemented as follows. Once all ants have
and m is the number of ants. Pheromone updating is intended to allocate a greater amount of
which better solutions get a higher reinforcement (as happens, for example, in genetic algorithms
under proportional selection). The pheromone updating formula was meant to simulate the
change in the amount of pheromone due to both the addition of new pheromone deposited by
ants on the visited edges and to pheromone evaporation. Pheromone placed on the edges plays
the role of a distributed long-term memory: this memory is not stored locally within the
individual ants, but is distributed on the edges of the graph. This allows an indirect form of
The classic JSSP is composed of n-jobs and m-machines and it is denoted by n/m/T /Cmax,
where the parameter n represents the number of jobs, m is the number of machines, T is the
technological sequence of the jobs in each machine, and Cmax indicates the performance
measure which should be minimized (i.e., maximum time taken to complete all jobs). An
In the example of Table I, we have 3 jobs, 3 machines and a technological sequence represented
in each row of the jobs. In the case of job 1 in Table I, we can see that it should be processed in
machine 1 first with a processing time of 3 (in the matrix, this time is represented between
parentheses). After that, this job 1 is processed in machine 2 with processing time of 3 and
To apply the AS algorithm for JSSP we will use the graph representation G = (V,C _D)
• V is a set of nodes representing operations of the jobs together with two special nodes: a start
(0) node and an end (*) node, representing the beginning and the end of the schedule,
respectively.
• C is a set of conjunctive arcs representing technological sequences of the operations.
• D is a set of disjunctive arcs representing pairs of operations which must be processed on the
same machine.
Figure 1 shows the corresponding graph for the instance of the JSSP described in Table I, whose
nodes represent each operation (i, j) where i is the current job and j its corresponding machine
(except for the nodes marked with (0) and (*) because they indicate the start and end of the
graph). The processing time of each operation is denoted by tij on each node. The conjunctive
arcs give the technological sequence connecting all operations of the same job and disjunctive
In this section, we describe the operation of the classical AS for the JSSP proposed in, in which a
decision policy until obtaining a solution for the problem. In order to communicate the individual
search experience to the colony, the ants mark the corresponding paths with some amount of
pheromone according to the type of solutions found. This amount is inversely proportional to the
cost of the path generated (i.e., if the path found is long, the amount of pheromone deposited is
low; otherwise, the amount of pheromone deposited is high). Therefore, in the following
iterations more ants will be attracted to the most promising paths. Besides the pheromone, the
ants are guided by a heuristic value in order to help them in the construction process. All the
decisions taken by the ant (the path found or solution), are stored in a tabu list (TL). As it was
indicated above, to apply the AS algorithm, the instance of the problem must be first constructed
in a graphical representation G. The AS starts with a small amount of pheromone c along each
edge on G. Each ant is then assigned a starting position, which is added to its tabu list. The initial
Once the initialization phase is completed, each ant will independently construct a solution by
using equation (1) at each decision point until a complete solution has been found. After every
ant’s tabu list is full, the cost Cmax of the obtained solution is calculated.
The pheromone amount along each edge (i,j) is calculated according to equation(2). Finally, all
tabu lists are emptied. If the stopping criterion has not been reached, the algorithm will continue
The decision of each ant is based, not only the amount of pheromone τij , located along edge
(i,j), but also on the heuristic value ηij along this edge. The transition probability to move from
heuristic (parameter β) with respect to the pheromone trails (parameter α). Setting β = 0 will
result in only considering the pheromone information in the ant’s decision, whereas if α = 0, only
The pheromone trail levels to be used in the next iteration of the algorithm are given by the
formula:
where ρ is a coefficient, such that (1−ρ) can be interpreted as a trail evaporation coefficient; that
is, (1 − ρ) × τij (t) represents the amount of trail which evaporates on each edge (i,j) in the period
between iteration t and t+ 1. The total amount of pheromone laid by the m ants Δτij , is
calculated by:
where Q is a positive real valued constant and Cmax is the cost of the solution of the kth ant,
while Q/Ck max gives the quantity of pheromone per unit of time. It is important to note that
pheromone evaporation causes the amount of pheromone on each edge of G to decrease over
time. The evaporation process is important because it prevents AS from prematurely converging
to a sub-optimal solution. In this way, the AS has the capability of forgetting bad (or even
partially good) solutions, which favors a more in-depth exploration of the search space.
CHAPTER 3
PROBLEM FORMULATION
The FJSP may be formulated as follows. Consider a set of n independent jobs, noted Á = fJ1;J2;
:::;Jn; 1 · j · Jg, which are carried out by K machines Mk, M = fM1;M2; :::;Mk; 1 · k · Kg. Each
job Jj consists of a sequence of nj operations Oi; j, i = 1;2; :::nj. Each routing has to be
performed to achieve a job. The execution of each operation i of a job Jj requires one ressource
selected from a set of available machines. The assignment of the operation Oi; j to the machine
Mk µM entails the occupation of the latter one during a processing time, noted pi; j;k. The
problem is thus to both determine an assignment scheme and a sequence of the operations on all
• Each job is characterized by the earliest starting time r j and the latest finishing time dj.
• Denote by pti; j and ri; j respectively the processing time and the ready date of the operation
Oi; j.
The pi; j;k represent the processing time pti; j with the machine Mk.
• Each machine can not perform more than one operation at the same time.
• The objective is to find an operation ordering set satisfying a cost function under problem
constraints.
In this stage, the application of the combined ant systems with tabu search techniques in the
and Mk. A task is mapped to a Oi; j node; a machine is mapped to a Mk. There is an edge
between the Oi; j node and the Mk node if and only if the corresponding task can be assigned to
the corresponding machine while respecting the availability of the machine and the precedence
constraints among the operations of different jobs. The cost of assignment is directly related to
To model the process in a more straightforward manner, we use the construction graph that is
With this construction graph, we can transform the FJSP into a traveling ant problem.
Specifically, given the representative table of n rows and m columns, and each of its cells is
associated with pi; j;k, representing this one distance among Oi; j and Mk. An ant seeks to travel
across the table in such a way that all of the following constraints will be satisfied: one and only
one cell is visited for each of the rows. In the rest of this paper, "tour" and "solution" are used
The Ant system approach was inspired by the behaviour of the real ants. The ants depose the
chemical pheromone when they move in their environment, they are also able to detect and to
follow pheromone trails. In our case, the pheromone trail describes how the ant systems build the
solution of the FJSP problem. The probability of choosing a branch at a certain time depends on
the total amount of pheromone on the branch, which in turn is proportional to the number of ants
that used the branch until that time. The probability Pf i jk that an ant will assign an operation Oi;
j of job Jj to an available machine Mk. Each of the ants builds a solution using a combination of
the information provided by the pheromone trail ti jk and by the heuristic function defined by hi
jk = pi; j;k.
Formally, the probability of picking that an ant f th will assign an operation Oi; j of job Jj to the
parameters that control the relative importance of trail versus visibility. Therefore the transition
probability is a trade-off between visibility and trail intensity at the given time.
To allow the ants to share information about good solutions, the updating of the pheromone trail
must be established. After each iteration of the ant systems algorithm, equation 2 describes in
detail the pheromone update used when all ants have completed an own scheduling solution
denote Lants, that represent the length of ant tour. In order to guide the ant systems towards good
solutions, a mechanism is required to assess the quality of the best solution. The obvious choice
would be to use the best makespan Lmin =Cmax of all solutions given by a set of ant.
After all of the ants have completed their tours, the trail levels on all of the arcs need to be
updated. The evaporation factor r ensures that pheromone is not accumulated infinitely and
denotes the proportion of ´SoldŠ pheromone that is carried over to the next iteration of the
algorithm. Then for each edge the pheromone deposited by each ant that used this edge are added
A simple tabu search was also implemented for this optimisation FJSP problem. The proposed
approach is to allow the ants to build their solutions and then the resulting solutions are taken to
Each of these ant solutions is then used in the pheromone update stage. The local search is
performed on every ant solution, every iteration, so it needs to be fairly fast. In the case of the
FJSP problem, the method is to pick the machine responsible to the Cmax and check if any
operations Oi; j could be swapped between other machines which would result in a lower
makespan. Following their concept, the local search considers one problem machine at a time
and attempts to swap one operation from the problem machine with any other (non-problem)
machine in the solution (non-problem operations). Then the ants are used to generate promising
scheduling production solutions and the tabu search algorithm is used to try to improve these
solutions. The tabu search is performed on each problem machine and continues until there is no
The set up parameter values used in the ant system scheduling algorithms are often very
important in getting good results, however the appropriate values are very often entirely problem
dependent, and cannot always be derived from features of the problem itself:
• α determines the degree to which pheromone trail is used as the ants build their solution. The
lower the value, the less ‘attention’ the ants pay to the pheromone trail, but the higher values
implicate the ants then perform too little exploration, after testing values in the range 0.1-0.75
this algorithm works well with relatively high values (around 0.5-0.75).
• β determines the extent to which heuristic information is used by the ants. Again, values
between 0.1-0.75 were tested, and a value around 0.5 appeared to offer the best trade-off
between following the heuristic and allowing the ants to explore the research space.
• Γ is the value to which the pheromone trail values are initialized. Initially the value of the
parameter should be moderately high to encourage initial exploration, while the pheromone
• ρ is the pheromone evaporation parameter and is always set to be in the range [0 < r < x]. It
defines how quickly the ants ‘forget’ past solutions. A higher value makes for a more aggressive
• NBA defines the number of ants to use in the colony, a low value speeds the algorithm up
because less search is done, a high value slows the search down, as more ants run before each
execution speed and the quality of the solution achieved. It is interesting to note that for each
value of parameters the ant systems scheduling meta-heuristics yields a good solution. Moreover,
its convergence speed depends essentially on the number of used ants NBA.
given below.
In order to generate feasible and diverse solutions, initial ants are represented by solutions issued
from heuristic rules SPT, DL, FIFO, etc) and a random method. Heuristics are used to
– Find new solution by ant systems procedure scheduling given in section 3.2.
– If a new solution is improved then the current best solution becomes new solution
– else If no new solution was improved then apply the tabu search optimisation given in section
3.4.
– Add solution to the tabu list, if the tabu list is full then delete the oldest entry in the list.
• END Repeat
Illustration example
Let us consider a flexible job shop scheduling problem, this example is to execute three jobs Jj
Applying the ant systems meta-heuristic, the simulation propose four different scheduling with
The solution given in the table 7 has a makespan equal to 19 ut. The machine M5 is the cause of
this value of makespan. To solve this problem, the tabu search optimisation is applied for this
solution. Indeed, this method finds the operation O2;2 for job J2 on M2 that can be swapped
with other machines which will reduce makespan to 18 ut. And this method finds that the
operation O1;3 for the job J1 executed by M2 and can be swapped with M5 who will execute the
operation O2;2 for the job J2. Finally, the obtained solution by the tabu search is better than
before, table 8.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
All ant systems and tabu search optimisation results presented are for 1000 iterations with 10 the
number of ants, and each run was performed 10 times. The algorithms have been coded in
Matlab and C++ and tested using a P4 Pentium processor 2.4 GHz and Windows XP system.
To illustrate the effectiveness and performance of the algorithm proposed in this paper, six
representative benchmark FJSP instances (represented by problem n£m) based on practical data
Concerning the FJSP instances, the different results show that the solutions obtained are
generally acceptable and satisfactory. The values of the different objective functions show the
efficiency of the suggested approach, table 9. Moreover, the proposed method enables us to
obtain good results in a polynomial computation time. In fact, the efficiency of this approach can
be explained by the quality of the ant system algorithms combined by the tabu search heuristic to
In this paper, a new approach based on the combination of the ant system with tabu search
algorithm for solving flexible job-shop scheduling problems, is presented. The results for the
reformulated problems show that the ant systems with local search meta-heuristic can find
optimal solutions for different problems that can be adapted to deal with the FJSP problem. The
performances of the new approach are evaluated and compared with the results obtained from
other methods. The obtained results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. Ant system
algorithms and the tabu search techniques described are very effective and they alone can
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