A novel Variable Neighborhood Particle Swarm Optimization for multi-objective Flexible Job-Shop Scheduling Problems

This paper introduces a hybrid metaheuristic, the variable neighborhood particle swarm optimization (VNPSO), consisting of a combination of the variable neighborhood search (VNS) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). The proposed VNPSO method is used for solving the multi-objective flexible job-shop scheduling problems (FJSP). The details of implementation for the multi-objective FJSP and the corresponding computational experiments are reported. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm is an efficient approach for the multi-objective FJSP. especially for large scale problems.