Application of discrete artificial bee colony algorithm for cloud task optimization scheduling

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.

The continuous artificial bee colony algorithm for binary optimization

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm, which was inspired by the foraging and dance behaviors of real honey bee colonies, was first introduced for solving numerical optimization problems. When the solution space of the optimization problem is binary-structured, the basic ABC algorithm should be modified for solving this class of problems. In this study, we propose XOR-based modification for the solution-updating equation of the ABC algorithm in order to solve binary optimization problems. The proposed method, named binary ABC (binABC), is examined on an uncapacitated facility location problem, which is a pure binary optimization problem, and the results obtained by the binABC are compared with results obtained by binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO), the discrete ABC (DisABC) algorithm, and improved BPSO (IBPSO). The experimental results show that binABC is an alternative tool for solving binary optimization problems and is a competitive algorithm when compared with BPSO, DisABC, and IBPSO in terms of solution quality, robustness, and simplicity.

Swarm intelligence is briefly defined as the collective behavior of decentralized and self-organized swarms. Self-organization and labor division are the two key components of swarm intelligence. Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is one of the most recent swarm intelligence-based algorithms. The behavior of bees in ABC algorithm satisfies the self-organization features, but there is no specific labor division mechanism in ABC algorithm. In this work, we propose an improved ABC algorithm called labor division artificial bee colony (LDABC) algorithm by incorporating the labor division mechanism into ABC algorithm, which is achieved by individual specialization and role plasticity. We specify three different search methods for employed bees, onlooker bees and scout bees to realize individual specialization, these search methods are related to food source quality, enable bees to maximize exploitation of food source. Role plasticity is achieved by combining with cellular automata, where the roles of bees are not static but vary with their surrounding environment, enable bees not to limit to one search method. The different search modes and the flexibility of the search behaviors make our algorithm achieve a better balance between exploration and exploitation. The experimental results tested on 13 benchmark functions and CEC-2013 test functions demonstrate a competitive performance.

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.

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.

This paper deals with a new automatic guided vehicle (AGV) scheduling problem from the material handling process in a linear manufacturing workshop. The problem is to determine a sequence of Cells for AGV to travel to minimize the standard deviation of the waiting time of the Cells and the total travel distance of AGV. For this purpose, we first propose an integer linear programming model based on a comprehensive investigation. Then, we present an improved nearest-neighbor-based heuristic so as to fast generate a good solution in view of the problem-specific characteristics. Next, we propose an effective discrete artificial bee colony algorithm with some novel and advanced techniques including a heuristic-based initialization, six neighborhood structures and a new evolution strategy in the onlooker bee phase. Finally, the proposed algorithms are empirically evaluated based on several typical instances from the real-world linear manufacturing workshop. A comprehensive and thorough experiment shows that the presented algorithm produces superior results which are also demonstrated to be statistically significant than the existing algorithms.

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.