A Hybrid Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for Unrelated Parallel Machine Scheduling with Sequence-Dependent Setup Times

A hybrid estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) with iterated greedy (IG) search (EDA-IG) is proposed for solving the unrelated parallel machine scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times (UPMSP-SDST). For makespan criterion, some properties about neighborhood search operators to avoid invalid search are derived. A probability model based on neighbor relations of jobs is built in the EDA-based exploration phase to generate new solutions by sampling the promising search region. Two types of deconstruction and reconstruction as well as an IG search are designed in the IG-based exploitation phase. Computational complexity of the algorithm is analyzed, and the effect of parameters is investigated by using the Taguchi method of design-of-experiment. Numerical tests on 1640 benchmark instances are carried out. The results and comparisons demonstrate the effectiveness of the EDA-IG. Especially, the best-known solutions of 531 instances are updated. In addition, the effectiveness of the properties is also demonstrated by numerical comparisons.