An Improved Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Solving Hybrid Flexible Flowshop With Dynamic Operation Skipping

In this paper, we propose an improved discrete artificial bee colony (DABC) algorithm to solve the hybrid flexible flowshop scheduling problem with dynamic operation skipping features in molten iron systems. First, each solution is represented by a two-vector-based solution representation, and a dynamic encoding mechanism is developed. Second, a flexible decoding strategy is designed. Next, a right-shift strategy considering the problem characteristics is developed, which can clearly improve the solution quality. In addition, several skipping and scheduling neighborhood structures are presented to balance the exploration and exploitation ability. Finally, an enhanced local search is embedded in the proposed algorithm to further improve the exploitation ability. The proposed algorithm is tested on sets of the instances that are generated based on the realistic production. Through comprehensive computational comparisons and statistical analysis, the highly effective performance of the proposed DABC algorithm is favorably compared against several presented algorithms, both in solution quality and efficiency.