The Unrelated Parallel Machine Scheduling with a Dependent Time Setup using Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

Abstract

The unrelated parallel machine scheduling (PMS) problem is essential for the manufacturing industry. Scheduling will save company resources, especially time management. By solving scheduling problems quickly and precisely, the company can get more profit. On that note, this paper focused on unrelated PMS problems, which did not consider the inherent uncertainty in processing time and set up time by minimizing the makespan and tardiness. This paper aimed to minimize the makespan and tardiness using timing considerations. This paper described how to schedule unrelated parallel machines using the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) Algorithm approach. The ACO is beneficial for inherent parallelism problems and can provide fast and reasonable solutions. This study revealed that the results of ACO Algorithm scheduling were obtained under a steady condition in iteration 30467. This condition can be interpreted that the makespan and tardiness value is close to 2.75%. By minimizing the makespan and tardiness, the delay of product delivery to consumers can be anticipated. Moreover, a company can maintain customer satisfaction and increase its profit.