An imperialist competitive algorithm with adaptive cooperation for resource-constrained unrelated parallel machines scheduling with setup time

Resource-constrained unrelated parallel machine scheduling problem (RLIPMSP) has been extensively considered; however, RUPMSP with setup time is seldom studied. In this study, RUPNISP with sequence-dependent setup time (SDST) is investigated and an imperialist competitive algoirthrn with adaptive cooperation (AYIICA) is presented to minimize total tardiness. for two strongest empires, two cooperation methods between them are given, adaptive selection based on the ratio of their normalized total cost is implemented to choose a cooperation way, the weakest empire support is executed by using their good solutions, and a new imperialit competition is presented. A number of experiments are conducted on 70 instances from the literature. The computational results demonstrate that the new strategies are effective and ACICA can provide better results than the algorithms from the literature.