A Multiobjective Optimization Approach to Solve a Parallel Machines Scheduling Problem

Abstract

A multiobjective optimization problem which focuses on parallel machines scheduling is considered. This problem consists of scheduling n independent jobs on m identical parallelmachines with release dates, due dates, and sequence-dependent setup times. The preemption of jobs is forbidden. The aim is to minimize two different objectives: makespan and total tardiness. The contribution of this paper is to propose first a new mathematical model for this specific problem. Then, since this problem is NP hard in the strong sense, two well-known approximated methods, NSGA-II and SPEA-II, are adopted to solve it. Experimental results show the advantages of NSGA-II for the studied problem. An exact method is then applied to be compared with NSGA-II algorithm in order to prove the efficiency of the former. Experimental results show the advantages of NSGA-II for the studied problem. Computational experiments show that on all the tested instances, our NSGA-II algorithm was able to get the optimal solutions.