A Genetic Algorithm for Scheduling Parallel Non-identical Batch Processing Machines

Abstract

In this paper, we study the scheduling problem of minimizing makespan on parallel non-identical batch processing machines. We formulate the scheduling problem into an integer programming model. Due to the difficulty of the problem, it is hard to solve the problem with standard mathematical programming software. We propose a genetic algorithm based on random keys encoding to address this problem. Computational results show that this genetic algorithm consistently finds a solution in a reasonable amount of computation time