A vibration damping optimization algorithm for a parallel machines scheduling problem with sequence-independent family setup times

Parallel machines scheduling problem is a branch of production scheduling, which is among the most difficult combinatorial optimization problems. This paper develops a meta-heuristic algorithm based on the concept of the vibration damping in mechanical vibration, called vibration damping optimization (VDO) algorithm for optimizing the identical parallel machine scheduling problem with sequence-independent family setup times. The objective function of this problem is to minimize the total weighted completion time. Furthermore, the Taguchi experimental design method is applied to set and estimate the appropriate values of the parameters required in our proposed VDO. We computationally compare the results obtained by the proposed VDO with the results of the genetic algorithm (GA) and branch-and-bound method. Consequently, the computational results validate the quality of the proposed algorithm. 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.