Hybrid genetic algorithm with priority rule-based reconstruction for flexible job-shop scheduling

A heuristic method for solving flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is proposed. FJSP is more complex than classical scheduling problems in that operations are processed on one of multiple candidate machines and one of them must be selected to obtain a feasible solution. The proposed method utilizes a solution improvement procedure with priority rules. This procedure is implemented on top of the efficient existing method for the FJSP which consists of genetic algorithm and local search method. The performance of the proposed method is analyzed on various benchmark problems. As a result, it is confirmed that the proposed method outperforms the existing method on problems with particular conditions while its average performance does not match the state-of-the-art algorithm.