An effective hybrid optimization algorithm for the flow shop scheduling problem

This paper presents a new multi-swarm co-evolutionary algorithm named parallel particle swam optimization (PPSO) on the basis of standard PSO algorithm. Simulated annealing (SA) algorithm was introduced to increase escaping probability from local optima. By reasonably combining the PPSO with SA, we develop a general, fast and easily implemented hybrid optimization algorithm, and apply it to solve flow shop scheduling problem. Comparing results indicate that the new hybrid method is an effective and competitive approach for the flow shop scheduling problem.