An Improved Hyperplane Assisted Multiobjective Optimization for Distributed Hybrid Flow Shop Scheduling Problem in Glass Manufacturing Systems

Abstract

To solve the distributed hybrid flow shop scheduling problem (DHFS) in raw glass manufacturing systems, we investigated an improved hyperplane assisted evolutionary algorithm (IhpaEA). Two objectives are simultaneously considered, namely, the maximum completion time and the total energy consumptions. Firstly, each solution is encoded by a three-dimensional vector, i.e., factory assignment, scheduling, and machine assignment. Subsequently, an efficient initialization strategy embeds two heuristics are developed, which can increase the diversity of the population. Then, to improve the global search abilities, a Pareto-based crossover operator is designed to take more advantage of non-dominated solutions. Furthermore, a local search heuristic based on three parts encoding is embedded to enhance the searching performance. To enhance the local search abilities, the cooperation of the search operator is designed to obtain better non-dominated solutions. Finally, the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is more efficient than the other three state-of-the-art algorithms. The results show that the Pareto optimal solution set obtained by the improved algorithm is superior to that of the traditional multiobjective algorithm in terms of diversity and convergence of the solution.