A particle swarm optimization-based algorithm for flexible assembly job shop scheduling problem with sequence dependent setup times

Abstract this paper considers a flexible assembly job shop scheduling problem with the sequence dependent setup times, and its objective is minimization of makespan which integrates the process planning and scheduling activities. this is a combinatorial optimization problem with substantially large solution space, suggesting that it is highly difficult to find the best solution with the exact search method. in this paper a particle swarm optimization based algorithm is proposed which applies a novel solution representation method to fit the continuous nature of algorithm in the discrete modeled problem. the numerical experiments also have been performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.