An Automatic Heuristic Design Approach for Seru Scheduling Problem with Resource Conflicts

Abstract

In current environments, production systems need the ability of quick response to face the volatile markets. Seru production systems, as a new mode of the production system, have the advantages of quick response, high flexibility, and high efficiency. Seru scheduling, which refers to constructing serus with an exact sequence in limited workspace, is an important decision problem in the operational management of seru production systems and can reflect the reconfiguration nature of seru production systems. This study investigates a seru scheduling problem with resource conflicts, whose objective is to minimize the makespan. An automatic heuristic design approach that combines a genetic programming algorithm and structure similarity-based operators is proposed. Comparative experiments are conducted with human-made rules, basic genetic programming, genetic programming-based algorithm, and with some state-of-the-art scheduling algorithms. The results show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.