An iterated greedy algorithm with optimization of partial solutions for the makespan permutation flowshop problem

Permutation flowshop scheduling problems (PFSPs) and, in particular, the variant with the objective of minimizing makespan have received an enormous attention in scheduling research and combinatorial optimization. As a result, the algorithmic approaches to this PFSP variant have reached extremely high performance. Currently, one of the most effective algorithm for this problem is a structurally rather simple iterated greedy algorithm. In this paper, we explore the possibility of re-optimizing partial solutions obtained after the solution destruction step of the iterated greedy algorithm. We show that with this extension, the performance of the state-of-the-art algorithm for the PFSP under makespan criterion can be significantly improved and we give experimental evidence that the local search on partial solutions is the key component for the high performance of the algorithm.     

一种基于PFSP性质的深度优先搜索算法

三机以上同顺序Flow-shop问题(PFSP)是著名的NP完全问题.在充分利用PFSP自身特性的基础上,提出一种可变路径的深度优先搜索算法.该算法在搜索过程中根据需要采用两种不同邻域,在必要时将PFSP转化为一个指派问题,自动变更搜索路径,以避免陷入局部最优解.数值仿真实验表明,该算法对于大规模PFSP能取得良好的计算结果.     

Reconstructing permutation table to improve the Tabu Search for the PFSP on GPU

General-purpose computing on graphics processing unit (GPGPU) has been adopted to accelerate the running of applications which require long execution time in various problem domains. Tabu Search belonging to meta-heuristics optimization has been used to find a suboptimal solution for NP-hard problems within a more reasonable time interval. In this paper, we have investigated in how to improve the performance of Tabu Search algorithm on GPGPU and took the permutation flow shop scheduling problem (PFSP) as the example for our study. In previous approach proposed recently for solving PFSP by Tabu Search on GPU, all the job permutations are stored in global memory to successfully eliminate the occurrences of branch divergence. Nevertheless, the previous algorithm requires a large amount of global memory space, because of a lot of global memory access resulting in system performance degradation. We propose a new approach to address the problem. The main contribution of this paper is an efficient multiple-loop struct to generate most part of the permutation on the fly, which can decrease the size of permutation table and significantly reduce the amount of global memory access. Computational experiments on problems according with benchmark suite for PFSP reveal that the best performance improvement of our approach is about 100%, comparing with the previous work.     

Using iterated local search for solving the flow‐shop problem: Parallelization,parametrization, and randomization issues

Iterated local search (ILS) is a powerful framework for developing efficient algorithms for the permutation flow‐shop problem (PFSP). These algorithms are relatively simple to implement and use very few parameters, which facilitates the associated fine‐tuning process. Therefore, they constitute an attractive solution for real‐life applications. In this paper, we discuss some parallelization, parametrization, and randomization issues related to ILS‐based algorithms for solving the PFSP. In particular, the following research questions are analyzed: (a) Is it possible to simplify even more the parameter setting in an ILS framework without affecting performance? (b) How do parallelized versions of these algorithms behave as we simultaneously vary the number of different runs and the computation time? (c) For a parallelized version of these algorithms, is it worthwhile to randomize the initial solution so that different starting points are considered? (d) Are these algorithms affected by the use of a “good‐quality” pseudorandom number generator? In this paper, we introduce the new ILS‐ESP (where ESP is efficient, simple, and parallelizable) algorithm that is specifically designed to take advantage of parallel computing, allowing us to obtain competitive results in “real time” for all tested instances. The ILS‐ESP also uses “natural” parameters, which simplifies the calibration process. An extensive set of computational experiments has been carried out in order to answer the aforementioned research questions.     

Particle swarm optimization with expanding neighborhood topology for the permutation flowshop scheduling problem

This paper introduces a new algorithmic nature-inspired approach that uses particle swarm optimization (PSO) with different neighborhood topologies, for successfully solving one of the most computationally complex problems, the permutation flowshop scheduling problem (PFSP). The PFSP belongs to the class of combinatorial optimization problems characterized as NP-hard and, thus, heuristic and metaheuristic techniques have been used in order to find high quality solutions in reasonable computational time. The proposed algorithm for the solution of the PFSP, the PSO with expanding neighborhood topology, combines a PSO algorithm, the variable neighborhood search strategy and a path relinking strategy. As, in general, the structure of the social network affects strongly a PSO algorithm, the proposed method using an expanding neighborhood topology manages to increase the performance of the algorithm. As the algorithm starts from a small size neighborhood and by increasing (expanding) in each iteration the size of the neighborhood, it ends to a neighborhood that includes all the swarm, and it manages to take advantage of the exploration abilities of a global neighborhood structure and of the exploitation abilities of a local neighborhood structure. In order to test the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed method, we use a set of benchmark instances of different sizes and compare the proposed method with a number of other PSO algorithms and other algorithms from the literature.     

Multi-operator based evolutionary algorithms for solving constrained optimization problems

Over the last two decades, many sophisticated evolutionary algorithms have been introduced for solving constrained optimization problems. Due to the variability of characteristics in different COPs, no single algorithm performs consistently over a range of problems. In this paper, for a better coverage of the problem characteristics, we introduce an algorithm framework that uses multiple search operators in each generation. The appropriate mix of the search operators, for any given problem, is determined adaptively. The framework is tested by implementing two different algorithms. The performance of the algorithms is judged by solving 60 test instances taken from two constrained optimization benchmark sets from specialized literature. The first algorithm, which is a multi-operator based genetic algorithm (GA), shows a significant improvement over different versions of GA (each with a single one of these operators). The second algorithm, using differential evolution (DE), also confirms the benefit of the multi-operator algorithm by providing better and consistent solutions. The overall results demonstrated that both GA and DE based algorithms show competitive, if not better, performance as compared to the state of the art algorithms.     

An effective hybrid teaching–learning-based optimization algorithm for permutation flow shop scheduling problem

Permutation flow shop scheduling (PFSP) is among the most studied scheduling settings. In this paper, a hybrid Teaching–Learning-Based Optimization algorithm (HTLBO), which combines a novel teaching–learning-based optimization algorithm for solution evolution and a variable neighborhood search (VNS) for fast solution improvement, is proposed for PFSP to determine the job sequence with minimization of makespan criterion and minimization of maximum lateness criterion, respectively. To convert the individual to the job permutation, a largest order value (LOV) rule is utilized. Furthermore, a simulated annealing (SA) is adopted as the local search method of VNS after the shaking procedure. Experimental comparisons over public PFSP test instances with other competitive algorithms show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. For the DMU problems, 19 new upper bounds are obtained for the instances with makespan criterion and 88 new upper bounds are obtained for the instances with maximum lateness criterion.     

Solving fuzzy p-hub center problem by genetic algorithm incorporating local search

The p-hub center problem has extensive applications in various real-world fields such as transportation and telecommunication systems. This paper presents a new risk aversion p-hub center problem with fuzzy travel times, in which value-at-risk (VaR) criterion is adopted in the formulation of objection function. For trapezoidal and normal fuzzy travel times, we first turn the original VaR p-hub center problem into its equivalent parametric mixed-integer programming problem, then develop a hybrid algorithm by incorporating genetic algorithm and local search (GALS) to solve the parametric mixed-integer programming problem. In our designed GALS, the GA is used to perform global search, while LS strategy is applied to each generated individual (or chromosome) of the population. Finally, we conduct two sets of numerical experiments and discuss the experimental results obtained by general-purpose LINGO solver, standard GA and GALS. The computational results show that the GALS achieves the better performance than LINGO solver and standard GA.     

Development,application, and comparison of hybrid meta-heuristics for urban land-use allocation optimization: Tabu search,genetic, GRASP,and simulated annealing algorithms

Land-use optimization problem (LUOP) that seeks to allocate different land types to land units involves various dimensions and deals with numerous conflicting objectives and a large set of data and variables. Single meta-heuristics are broadly developed and applied for solving LUOP. Despite the acceptable solutions derived from these algorithms, researchers in both academic and practical areas face the interesting question: can we develop an algorithm with better efficiency and solution quality? In the literature of operation research, hybridization, a combination of meta-heuristics, was introduced as a way of generating better algorithms. Therefore, this paper aims at developing novel algorithms through hybridizing Tabu search (TS), genetic algorithm (GA), GRASP, and simulated annealing (SA) and examining their quality and efficiency in practice. Accordingly, low-level teamwork GRASP–GA–TS (LLTGRGATS), high-level relay Greedy–GA–TS, and high-level teamwork SA were developed. Firstly, these algorithms were applied for solving small- and large-size single-row facility layout problem to evaluate their performance and functionality and to select the satisfactory algorithm in comparison with the other developed hybrids. Secondly, the selected algorithm, LLTGRGATS, and SVNS, a recent hybrid algorithm proposed for solving LUOP, were performed on a study area to solve a LUOP with two constraints and seven nonlinear objective functions. The outputs showed that the quality and efficiency of LLTGRGATS were slightly better than those of SVNS and it can be considered as a favorable tool for land-use planning process.     

A genetic algorithm with modified crossover operator and search area adaptation for the job-shop scheduling problem

The genetic algorithm with search area adaptation (GSA) has a capacity for adapting to the structure of solution space and controlling the tradeoff balance between global and local searches, even if we do not adjust the parameters of the genetic algorithm (GA), such as crossover and/or mutation rates. But, GSA needs the crossover operator that has ability for characteristic inheritance ratio control. In this paper, we propose the modified genetic algorithm with search area adaptation (mGSA) for solving the Job-shop scheduling problem (JSP). Unlike GSA, our proposed method does not need such a crossover operator. To show the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conduct numerical experiments by using two benchmark problems. It is shown that this method has better performance than existing GAs.     

A novel ACO–GA hybrid algorithm for feature selection in protein function prediction

Protein function prediction is an important problem in functional genomics. Typically, protein sequences are represented by feature vectors. A major problem of protein datasets that increase the complexity of classification models is their large number of features. Feature selection (FS) techniques are used to deal with this high dimensional space of features. In this paper, we propose a novel feature selection algorithm that combines genetic algorithms (GA) and ant colony optimization (ACO) for faster and better search capability. The hybrid algorithm makes use of advantages of both ACO and GA methods. Proposed algorithm is easily implemented and because of use of a simple classifier in that, its computational complexity is very low. The performance of proposed algorithm is compared to the performance of two prominent population-based algorithms, ACO and genetic algorithms. Experimentation is carried out using two challenging biological datasets, involving the hierarchical functional classification of GPCRs and enzymes. The criteria used for comparison are maximizing predictive accuracy, and finding the smallest subset of features. The results of experiments indicate the superiority of proposed algorithm.     

A hybrid estimation of distribution algorithm for simulation-based scheduling in a stochastic permutation flowshop

The permutation flowshop scheduling problem (PFSP) is NP-complete and tends to be more complicated when considering stochastic uncertainties in the real-world manufacturing environments. In this paper, a two-stage simulation-based hybrid estimation of distribution algorithm (TSSB-HEDA) is presented to schedule the permutation flowshop under stochastic processing times. To deal with processing time uncertainty, TSSB-HEDA evaluates candidate solutions using a novel two-stage simulation model (TSSM). This model first adopts the regression-based meta-modelling technique to determine a number of promising candidate solutions with less computation cost, and then uses a more accurate but time-consuming simulator to evaluate the performance of these selected ones. In addition, to avoid getting trapped into premature convergence, TSSB-HEDA employs both the probabilistic model of EDA and genetic operators of genetic algorithm (GA) to generate the offspring individuals. Enlightened by the weight training process of neural networks, a self-adaptive learning mechanism (SALM) is employed to dynamically adjust the ratio of offspring individuals generated by the probabilistic model. Computational experiments on Taillard’s benchmarks show that TSSB-HEDA is competitive in terms of both solution quality and computational performance.     

GSAGA: A hybrid algorithm for task scheduling in cloud infrastructure

Cloud computing is becoming a very popular form of distributed computing, in which digital resources are shared via the Internet. The user is provided with an overview of many available resources. Cloud providers want to get the most out of their resources, and users are inclined to pay less for better performance. Task scheduling is one of the most important aspects of cloud computing. In order to achieve high performance from cloud computing systems, tasks need to be scheduled for processing by appropriate computing resources. The large search space of this issue makes it an NP-hard problem, and more random search methods are required to solve this problem. Multiple solutions have been proposed with several algorithms to solve this problem until now. This paper presents a hybrid algorithm called GSAGA to solve the Task Scheduling Problem (TSP) in cloud computing. Although it has a high ability to search the problem space, the Genetic Algorithm (GA) performs poorly in terms of stability and local search. It is therefore possible to create a stable algorithm by combining the general search capacities of the GA with the Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA). Our experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm can solve the problem with higher efficiency compared with the state-of-the-art.

     

一种基于景观特征的浮点数编码遗传算法研究

遗传算法作为一种适应性搜索技术得到了普遍的应用,但其搜索效率不如启发式搜索.已有研究者将启发式知识用于二进制编码遗传算法,但浮点数编码在函数优化和约束优化领域明显有效于其它编码.本文基于算法运行时的景观特征作为启发式知识,用于浮点数编码遗传算法,力求提高其搜索效率、增强其局部搜索能力、拓展其应用领域.本文的理论研究和实验结果表明,将景观特征用于浮点数编码遗传算法,理论是可靠的,方法是可行的.     

基于遗传算法的数码问题求解

在人工智能研究中，数码问题常被用来作为一些搜索算法的测试实例。数码问题的搜索空间巨大，对于24数码问题，目前最好的启发式搜索算法找到最优解(最少移动步数)通常也至少需要2．25小时^[1]。遗传算法具有简单、通用、鲁棒性强的特点，适合于在复杂而庞大的搜索空间中寻找最优解。该文给出了求解该问题的遗传算法，并针对遗传算法容易过早收敛的问题，对传统遗传算法进行了改进。通过用多个随机生成的]5数码和24数码问题作为测试实例，本算法均在较短的时间内找到了问题的解，从而证明了算法的有效性。     

基于新邻域结构的Memetic 算法求解流水车间调度问题

流水车间调度是一类典型的生产调度问题,属于NP-难问题.针对传统的最优化方法难以求解大规模问题,提出了一个Memetic算法,在算法的局部搜索中使用一种新型的基于NEH的邻域结构,并且其邻域规模随着搜索的进行能够动态变化,可以大大提高算法的搜索能力.通过对标准Benchmark问题的测试,所得结果表明提出的基于新邻域结构的Memetic算法具有较好的性能,并且优于已有文献中的粒子群算法.     

基于分布估计算法的二阶段置换流水车间调度算法*

针对以完工时间最小化为目标的置换流水车间调度问题（PFSP）,提出了一种基于分布估计算法的二阶段置换流水车间调度算法。首先,在算法的第一阶段采用分布估计算法对PFSP进行优化得到一个局部最优解;为了进一步提高解的优化质量,在第二阶段提出了一种新的混合邻域搜索机制对第一阶段获得的局优解进行邻域搜索;最后,对Rec类和Tai类基准测试问题进行了测试,实验结果证实了算法的有效性。     

求解置换流水线调度问题的改进萤火虫优化算法

针对最小化最大完成时间的置换流水线调度问题,提出了一种改进的离散萤火虫优化算法。在传统萤火虫优化算法的基础上,采用基于升序排序的随机键编码方式对萤火虫种群进行离散化处理,使用NEH算法对萤火虫种群进行初始化处理,结合遗传算法的交叉变异思想改进位置更新策略,采用个体变异方式解决孤立个体问题,提高算法的寻优能力。最后通过典型算例对改进算法进行仿真测试,实验结果表明该算法求解置换流水线调度问题时具备很强的寻优能力和鲁棒性,明显优于传统萤火虫优化算法和遗传算法,是解决置换流水线调度问题的一种有效算法。     

Genetic algorithm with ant colony optimization (GA-ACO) for multiple sequence alignment

Multiple sequence alignment, known as NP-complete problem, is among the most important and challenging tasks in computational biology. For multiple sequence alignment, it is difficult to solve this type of problems directly and always results in exponential complexity. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm of genetic algorithm with ant colony optimization for multiple sequence alignment. The proposed GA-ACO algorithm is to enhance the performance of genetic algorithm (GA) by incorporating local search, ant colony optimization (ACO), for multiple sequence alignment. In the proposed GA-ACO algorithm, genetic algorithm is conducted to provide the diversity of alignments. Thereafter, ant colony optimization is performed to move out of local optima. From simulation results, it is shown that the proposed GA-ACO algorithm has superior performance when compared to other existing algorithms.     

基于遗传和禁忌搜索混合算法的预制生产调度的研究

遗传算法是一种全局搜索能力较强的元启发式算法,可通过不断进化种群得到最优或近优解;但是遗传算法的局部搜索能力较差,容易发生早熟收敛问题。因此为了克服遗传算法早熟收敛的问题,考虑到禁忌搜索算法的局部搜索能力较强的优势,提出了一种遗传和禁忌搜索的混合算法解决预制生产流水车间的提前和拖期惩罚问题。该混合算法是在遗传算法每次迭代后,通过禁忌搜索改进当前种群中的最好染色体,并替换种群中适应度值最差的染色体。经实验测试表明,所提出的混合算法的性能更优,更容易得到全局最优解或近优解。