A multi-objective electromagnetism algorithm for a bi-objective hybrid no-wait flowshop scheduling problem

This article studies multi-objective hybrid no-wait flowshop scheduling problems to minimize both makespan and total tardiness. This article mathematically formulates the problem using an effective multi-objective mixed integer linear programming models. Since the problem is NP-hard and it is difficult to find an optimal solution in a reasonable computational time, an efficient multi-objective electromagnetism algorithm (MOEA) is presented as the solution procedure. Electromagnetism algorithm is known as a flexible and effective population-based algorithm utilizing an attraction/repulsion mechanism to move the particles towards optimality. MOEA is carefully evaluated for its performance against multi-objective immune algorithms and the adaptation of a well-known multi-objective simulated annealing in the relevant literature by means of multi-objective performance measures and statistical tools. The results show that the proposed solution method outperforms the others.