A hybrid method for scheduling problems of flow shop

Scheduling is a very complex but important problem. Based on the mathematical model of the scheduling problem, a hybrid algorithm combined the genetic algorithm with the branch and bound method is proposed to solve the flow shop scheduling problems. As for the randomicity and uncertainty of the GA, the feasible space may be broad and the efficiency is very low. Then, the branch and bound method has been applied to find the best lower bound of the possible job sequence. The proposed approach has been prototyped and implemented on different model sizes. Simulation results have shown not only the effectiveness of the algorithm, but also the high searching efficiency.