Two enhanced differential evolution algorithms for job shop scheduling problems

This paper proposes two new differential evolution algorithms (DE) for solving the job shop scheduling problem (JSP) that minimises two single objective functions: makespan and total weighted tardiness. The proposed algorithms aim to enhance the efficiency of the search by dynamically balancing exploration and exploitation ability in DE and avoiding the problem of premature convergence. The first algorithm allows DE population to simultaneously perform different mutation strategies in order to extract the strengths of various strategies and compensate for the weaknesses of each individual strategy to enhance the overall performance. The second algorithm allows the whole DE population to change the search behaviour whenever the solutions do not improve. This study also introduces a modified local mutation operation embedded in the two proposed DE algorithms to promote exploitation in different areas of the search space. In addition, a local search technique, called Critical Block (CB) neighbourhood, is applied to enhance the quality of solutions. The performances of the proposed algorithms are evaluated on a set of benchmark problems and compared with results obtained from an efficient existing Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) algorithm. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed DE algorithms yield promising results while using shorter computing times and fewer numbers of function evaluations.