Machine Learning based Algorithm Selection and Genetic Algorithms for serial-batch scheduling

• A serial-batch scheduling problem is the application case of our analysis. • “Learning-to-rank” ML models select the best-performing heuristic. • Two Genetic Algorithms are introduced with different encoding schemes. • Both Genetic Algorithms can use solutions from the heuristics as initial populations. • Our method substantially improves the solution quality. Whenever combinatorial optimization problems cannot be solved by exact solution methods in reasonable time, tailor-made algorithms (heuristics, meta-heuristics) are developed. Often, these heuristics exploit structural properties and perform well on selected subsets of the problem space. For example, this is how the two best-known construction heuristics solve the scheduling problem investigated in this study (i.e., the scheduling of parallel serial-batch processing machines with incompatible job families, restricted batch capacities, arbitrary batch capacity demands, and sequence-dependent setup times). However, when the properties change, the performance of one algorithm might decrease, and another algorithm might have been the better choice. To resolve this issue, we propose using Machine Learning to exploit the strengths of different algorithms and to select the probably best-performing algorithm for each problem instance individually. To that, we investigate a variety of methods from the “learning-to-rank” literature and propose several adaptations. Furthermore, because there is no algorithm for the considered scheduling problem that is capable to explore the entire solution space, we developed two Genetic Algorithms for the improvement of initial solutions computed by the selected algorithms. Here, we put special emphasis on ensuring that the solution representation (encoding) reflects the entire solution space and that the operators (e.g., for recombination and mutation) are appropriate to explore and exploit this space completely. Our computational experiments show an average increase of 39.19% in solution quality.