Shuffled frog-leaping algorithm based batch scheduling in semiconductor furnace

An effective shuffled frog-leaping algorithm (SFLA) is proposed in this paper to solve the batch scheduling problem in semiconductor furnace. To map integer matrix based individuals to feasible schedules, a new bi-sequence based decoding method is presented. To balance exploration and exploitation capabilities, a crossover scheme and a local search operator for the specific problem are incorporated in the framework of the SFLA. Finally, numerical testing results are provided based on three instances and a real case. The comparisons demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.