Scheduling an Energy-efficient Flexible Job Shop with Limited Waiting Time for Partial Operation Sequences

The classical energy-efficient flexible job shop problem (EFJSP) assumes that the waiting time between adjacent operations does not have strict requirements. However, in many actual industrial environments, the phenomenon that the waiting time cannot exceed a specified value is very common. With regard to this, we propose an EFJSP with the limited waiting time (EFJSP-LWT) with minimization of makespan and total energy consumption. To solve this problem, we develop a knowledge-guided grouping artificial bee colony (KGGABC) algorithm to solve it. In KGGABC, a grouping employed bee phase is designed, a modified selection method and knowledge are given in onlooker bee phase. In addition, a new principle is proposed to compare solutions. Finally, extensive experiments are conducted and the results demonstrate that KGGABC outperforms all compared algorithms over 90% instances in solving EFJSP-LW. Our proposed method can help the production managers who work with flexible manufacturing systems to obtain feasible scheduling schemes considering limited waiting time and may be useful for future research on energy-oriented scheduling problems in realistic production systems.