A Hybrid Colonial Competitive Algorithm for the Integrated Process Planning and Scheduling Problem

This article studies the integrated process planning and scheduling problem that commonly exists in manufacturing systems and is strongly NP-hard. A hybrid colonial competitive algorithm (CCA) with tabu search (TS) is proposed to obtain promising solutions efficiently. Two new iteration approaches based on the discrete Jaya algorithm are designed and incorporated into the assimilation process of CCA, which aims to enhance its searching capability while prevising population diversity. Furthermore, the proposed TS algorithm utilizes two neighborhood structures, namely, M.G and N7, to achieve searching balance between diversification and intensification. Computational experiments conducted on benchmarking instances taken from the literature demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed algorithm regarding both efficiency and effectiveness.