An Effective Discrete Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Scheduling an Automatic-Guided-Vehicle in a Linear Manufacturing Workshop

The performance of task scheduling algorithm in cloud computing determines the performance of the cloud system. This study mainly analyzed the application of the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm in the cloud task scheduling. In order to solve the problem of cloud task scheduling, the ABC algorithm was discretized to get the discrete artificial bee colony (DABC) algorithm. Then the mathematical model of cloud task scheduling was established and solved by the DABC algorithm. Finally, the simulation experiment was carried out, and the performance of first-come-first-served (FCFS), MIN–MIN, ABC and DABC algorithms under different cloud tasks was compared to verify the performance of the proposed algorithm. The results showed that the user waiting time of the DABC algorithm was 1210s, the load balance degree was 0.01, and the user payment fee was 1688 yuan when the number of cloud tasks was 500; compared with other algorithms, the user waiting time of the DABC algorithm was shorter, the resource load balance degree was higher, and the overall performance was better. The research results verify the effectiveness of the DABC algorithm in solving the problem of cloud task optimal scheduling, and it can be further extended and applied in practice.

The distributed permutation flowshop scheduling problem with preventive maintenance operator (PM/DPFSP) is closely related to modem industry. This paper presents an improved discrete artificial bee colony (IDABC) algorithm for solving this problem. The criterion to be optimized is the makespan. An improved NEH heuristic method is proposed to initialize the population effectively. We adapted a local search method with insertion and swap operator to produce neighboring solutions in employ bee phase and onlooker bee phase. A global search method with destruction and reconstruction phase is introduced to avoid local optima in scout bee phase. The parameters for the proposed IDABC are calibrated by means of a design of experiments and analysis of variance. We conduct extensive experiments to test the performance of IDABC. Computational results indicate that IDABC has promising advantages on PM/DPFSP.

An accelerated discrete artificial bee colony algorithm under the makespan constraint: Solving the distributed blocking flow shop scheduling problem with balanced energy consumption costs

A novel discrete artificial bee colony algorithm for the hybrid flowshop scheduling problem with makespan minimisation

Unlike a traditional flowshop problem where a job is assumed to be indivisible, in the lot-streaming flowshop problem, a job is allowed to overlap its operations between successive machines by splitting it into a number of smaller sub-lots and moving the completed portion of the sub-lots to downstream machine. In this way, the production is accelerated. This paper presents a discrete artificial bee colony (DABC) algorithm for a lot-streaming flowshop scheduling problem with total flowtime criterion. Unlike the basic ABC algorithm, the proposed DABC algorithm represents a solution as a discrete job permutation. An efficient initialization scheme based on the extended Nawaz-Enscore-Ham heuristic is utilized to produce an initial population with a certain level of quality and diversity. Employed and onlooker bees generate new solutions in their neighborhood, whereas scout bees generate new solutions by performing insert operator and swap operator to the best solution found so far. Moreover, a simple but effective local search is embedded in the algorithm to enhance local exploitation capability. A comparative experiment is carried out with the existing discrete particle swarm optimization, hybrid genetic algorithm, threshold accepting, simulated annealing and ant colony optimization algorithms based on a total of 160 randomly generated instances. The experimental results show that the proposed DABC algorithm is quite effective for the lot-streaming flowshop with total flowtime criterion in terms of searching quality, robustness and effectiveness. This research provides the references to the optimization research on lot-streaming flowshop.

This paper presents a discrete artificial bee colony algorithm for a single machine earliness–tardiness scheduling problem. The objective of single machine earliness–tardiness scheduling problems is to find a job sequence that minimises the total sum of earliness–tardiness penalties. Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a swarm-based meta-heuristic, which mimics the foraging behaviour of honey bee swarms. In this study, several modifications to the original ABC algorithm are proposed for adapting the algorithm to efficiently solve combinatorial optimisation problems like single machine scheduling. In proposed study, instead of using a single search operator to generate neighbour solutions, random selection from an operator pool is employed. Moreover, novel crossover operators are presented and employed with several parent sets with different characteristics to enhance both exploration and exploitation behaviour of the proposed algorithm. The performance of the presented meta-heuristic is evaluated on several benchmark problems in detail and compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms. Computational results indicate that the algorithm can produce better solutions in terms of solution quality, robustness and computational time when compared to other algorithms.

The main goal of Transmission Network Expansion Planning (TNEP) is determination of the number, time and location of new lines to be added to transmission network. Up to now, different methods have been used to solve the static TNEP (STNEP). In most of them, this problem is implemented regardless of power loss and the uncertainty in the load demand. With respect to the importance of these two parameters (loss and uncertainty) and their key role in an effective and precise planning, the evaluation and solution of STNEP using more efficient methods can be very useful. Hence, in this paper, a new method named Improved Discrete Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm (IDABC) is employed for the solution of STNEP problem considering simultaneously the loss and uncertainty in load demand. Finally, the proposed approach is applied to the real transmission network of Azerbaijan Regional Electrical Company located in northwest of Iran. Comparison of the results obtained from the proposed method with those of Discrete Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm (DABC) approach verifies the effectiveness and accuracy of the method in STNEP problem.

Feature selection plays an important role in the fields of pattern recognition, data mining and machine learning. Rough set method is one of effective methods for feature selection, which can preserve the meaning of the features. Presently ant colony optimization (ACO) has been successfully applied to rough set-based feature selection, however, it has the limitations of many control parameters, premature convergence and stagnation. In this paper, we propose a novel discrete artificial bee colony algorithm to overcome these drawbacks. In our algorithm, a search mechanism centered with feature core is introduced to avoid blindly searching, in which the values of corresponding bits of these features in feature core are unchanged during the iterative process. Meanwhile, Tabu search is adopted to avoid falling into local optima for every employed bee who can not select the solution of the Tabu list in each generation. In this work, our algorithm is applied to eight datasets from UCI database and the results produced by our algorithm and some rough set-based feature selection algorithms have been compared. The results show that our algorithm outperforms the other algorithms.

Grain is an important economic and strategic material of the country. In grain transportation, it is necessary to consider the running time, vehicle number, path length and other factors at the same time, which is a typical multi-objective problem, but also a NP-Hard problem. In this paper, an Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is introduced to solve the routing problem of grain transportation vehicles with multi-objective and time windows. Combined with the practical problems of grain transportation, the standard Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is improved in four aspects: population initialization, domain search mode, bulletin board setting and scout bee search mode, and a Multi-objective Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is proposed by using the strategy of first classification and then sorting and final iteration. The proposed algorithm is compared with other algorithms by using the standard test set in Solomon database. The results show that the Multi-objective Discrete Artificial Bee Colony algorithm has great advantages in solving the routing problem of grain transportation vehicles with time windows.

The continuous artificial bee colony algorithm for binary optimization

이 논문은 Automated Guided Vehicle(AGV)를 이용하여 운영되는 통합물류시스템의 시뮬레이션 실험설계와 분석에 관한 방법을 제시한다. 물류창고의 AGVs(Automated Guided Vehicle system) 성능을 최대로 운영하기 위해선 많은 변수들이 고려되어져야 하는데 대표적 중요 요인에는 차량 대수, 속도, 운행규칙, 부품 타입, 스케줄링, 버퍼 사이즈 등이 있다. 우리는 이 논문에서 다양한 중요요인들 중 (1)처리량 최대화, (2)차량 이용률 최대화 (3)차량 혼잡 최소화, (4)Automated Storage and Retrieval System(ASRS) 이용률 최대화를 고려하기 위해 직교배열(Orthogonal Array)로 실험계획을 수립하였고 이를 이용한 시뮬레이션 기반 분석과 진화전략(Evolution Strategy : ES)를 이용한 최적화를 각각 수행했다. 그 결과 ES에 비해 직교배열이 실험 시간과 회수를 절약하였고 두 결과에 대한 유효성 검사 또한 큰 차이를 나타내지 않았다. 따라서 본 논문에서 제시한 방법을 이용한 분석 방법은 시간, 회수 그리고 실험의 정확성에 대한 분석의 효율성을 증대시킬 것으로 예상되며 통합 물류 시스템 이외의 시스템에도 적용이 가능 할 것으로 생각된다. This paper presents the simulation design and analysis of Integrated Logistics System(ILS) which is operated by using the AGV(Automated Guided Vehicle). To maximize the operation performances of ILS with AGV, many parameters should be considered such as the number, velocity, and dispatching rule of AGV, part types, scheduling, and buffer sizes. We established the design of experiment in a way of Orthogonal Array in order to consider (1)maximizing the throughput; (2)maximizing the vehicle utilization; (3)minimizing the congestion; and (4)maximizing the Automated Storage and Retrieval System(AS/RS) utilization among various critical factors. Furthermore, we performed the optimization by using the simulation-based analysis and Evolution Strategy(ES). As a result, Orthogonal Array which is conducted far fewer than ES significantly saved not only the time but the same outcome when compared after validation test on the result from the two methods. Therefore, this approach ensures the confidence and provides better process for quick analysis by specifying exact experiment outcome even though it provides small number of experiment.

With the increasing shortage of spectrum resources on the earth, how to ensure the high-quality transmission of satellite wireless signals to the ground has become one of the most important problems in the current satellite ground communication system. In order to schedule spectrum resources more reasonably and efficiently, we propose a spectrum resource scheduling model based on adaptive chaotic distributed differential artificial bee colony algorithm. The algorithm uses chaotic distribution to generate initial solution. In the search phase, differential evolution strategy and artificial bee colony algorithm are used to work in parallel to find the local optimal solution. The selection operator is used to calculate the probability of selecting new bee sources, which improves the reliability and convergence speed of the algorithm. Finally, the results show that in single-channel and multi-channel scenes, the algorithm can help to improve the fairness and throughput.

This paper studies a new large-scale emergency medical services scheduling (EMSS) problem during the outbreak of epidemics like COVID-19, which aims to determine an optimal scheduling scheme of emergency medical services to minimize the completion time of nucleic acid testing to achieve rapid epidemic interruption. We first analyze the impact of the epidemic spread and assign different priorities to different emergency medical services demand points according to the degree of urgency. Then, we formulate the EMSS as a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) model and analyze its complexity. Given the NP-hardness of the problem, we develop two fast and effective improved discrete artificial bee colony algorithms (IDABC) based on problem properties. Experimental results for a real case and practical-sized instances with up to 100 demand points demonstrate that the IDABC significantly outperforms MILP solver CPLEX and two state-of-the-art metaheuristic algorithms in both solution quality and computational efficiency. In addition, we also propose some managerial implications to support emergency management decision-making.

In this paper, we propose an improved discrete artificial bee colony (DABC) algorithm to solve the hybrid flexible flowshop scheduling problem with dynamic operation skipping features in molten iron systems. First, each solution is represented by a two-vector-based solution representation, and a dynamic encoding mechanism is developed. Second, a flexible decoding strategy is designed. Next, a right-shift strategy considering the problem characteristics is developed, which can clearly improve the solution quality. In addition, several skipping and scheduling neighborhood structures are presented to balance the exploration and exploitation ability. Finally, an enhanced local search is embedded in the proposed algorithm to further improve the exploitation ability. The proposed algorithm is tested on sets of the instances that are generated based on the realistic production. Through comprehensive computational comparisons and statistical analysis, the highly effective performance of the proposed DABC algorithm is favorably compared against several presented algorithms, both in solution quality and efficiency.

In this paper, we address the steelmaking scheduling problems with multiple constrained resources. The objective is to minimize the maximum completion time. We consider the continuous casting constraint and resource constraints simultaneously. Based on the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm, we propose several heuristics and develop a discrete ABC (DABC) algorithm for the considered problem. In the proposed algorithm, a two-phase-based encoding mechanism is presented to create different searching abilities during different stages of evolution. Next, a decoding method considering the resource constraints is designed. A local search procedure is developed to utilize the two-phase encoding mechanism efficiently. Then, a global search heuristic is investigated to enhance the ability to escape from the local best. Finally, we test the proposed DABC algorithm by running it on sets of instances that are randomly generated based on realistic steelmaking production system. After detailed comparisons and statistical analysis, the competitive performance of the proposed DABC algorithm is verified.