Embedding ant system in genetic algorithm for re-entrant hybrid flow shop scheduling problems with time window constraints

This paper focuses on minimizing the makespan for a reentrant hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with time window constraints (rhfstw), which is often found in manufacturing systems producing the slider part of hard-disk drive products, in which production needs to be monitored to ensure high quality. for this reason, production time control is required from the starting-time-window stage to the ending-time-window stage. because of the complexity of the rhfstw problem, in this paper, genetic algorithm hybridized ant colony optimization (gaco) is proposed to be used as a support tool for scheduling. the results show that the gaco can solve problems optimally with reasonable computational effort.