Solving Permutation Problems with Differential Evolution: An Application to the Jobshop Scheduling Problem

Abstract

This study addresses the solution of Jobshop Scheduling Problems using Differential Evolution (DE). The issue of representing permutations through real numbers constitutes the key issue for developing an efficient implementation. Several techniques are empirically validated on problem instances traditionally adopted in the specialized literature. We also present a simple hybridization of DE with tabu search, which produces significant performance gains.