Solving the job shop scheduling problem by an immune algorithm

An immune algorithm is presented for solving the job shop scheduling problem. In the algorithm, the niche technology is used to keep the diversity of the population and chaos variables are employed to perform antibody mutation. The code of an antibody is based on random keys, and a heuristic process is given to decode the antibody into a parameterized active schedule to reduce the solution space. Experimental results demonstrate the algorithm is effective for solving job shop problems.