A cuckoo search-based scheduling algorithm for a semiconductor production line with constrained waiting time

The scheduling problem of a semiconductor production line with a constrained waiting time is studied in this paper. This problem can be regarded as an expanded flexible job-shop scheduling problem, which can often be described by a mixed integer nonlinear programming model. An improved cuckoo search algorithm is proposed to minimize the weighted completion time including the penalty of constrained waiting time violation. In the algorithm, we propose using an one-dimensional chaotic search strategy to make full use of the local space information. In addition, we introduce backtracking search into our algorithm to ensure a desired diversification of population. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approaches outperform several other state-of-the-art meta-heuristics.