A hybrid method for a parallel machine scheduling problem
Abstract
The scheduling problem dealt with in this paper consists in determining a feasible schedule when each job is defined with a ready date, a processing time different on each machine and a deadline. There are setup time sequence dependent. The parallel machines are composed of 2 types. The first one is characterized with ``cheap'' machines and the second one with ``expensive'' machines. The objective function is to find a feasible schedule first and to minimize the cost due to assignment and setup times costs second. The method presented in this paper is based on a three-phase heuristic. The first phase is based on an iterative heuristic, the second on a genetic algorithm and the last one on a branch and bound for post optimization.