Cultural Algorithm with catastrophe for flowshop under uncertainty with zero wait

A model that described the Flowshop scheduling problem with zero-wait restrictions under uncertainty was established based on the theory of rough sets and equalized into a clarity one, in which the uncertain processing time was described by rough variables. Further more, a new Cultural Algorithm with thought of catastrophe was proposed. Aimed at the scheduling problem, this paper designed the structure of the belief space and the communication channels between belief space and population space, and introduced the principle of catastrophe to solve the evolution ceased before best result showing up and the thought of sibling rivalry to handle the tardiness. The simulation results demonstrate the feasibility of the model and the proposed algorithm. The comparison with improved genetic algorithm and cultural algorithm without catastrophe shows the searching efficiency of the proposed algorithm.