An improved multiobjective memetic algorithm for permutation flow shop scheduling

This paper addresses a multiobjective scheduling problem in the permutation flow shop. The objectives are to minimize makespan and total flow time. The proposed approach is based on the framework of memetic algorithm, which is known as a hybrid of genetic algorithm and local search. The local search procedure is an iterative process repeating neighbor generation, neighbor evaluation, and neighbor selection. We take a problem-specific heuristic for neighbor generation and propose several strategies for neighbor evaluation and neighbor selection. Archive injection (adding non-dominated solutions to the population) is another issue under investigation. We examine the effects of the proposed strategies through experiments using forty widely used problem instances with different scales. We also evaluate the proposed approach by comparing it with other twenty-six ones in terms of three performance metrics. Our approach outperforms all benchmarks and updates a large portion of the sets of best known non-dominated solutions for large-scale instances.