A Novel Imperialist Competitive Algorithm With Multi-Elite Individuals Guidance for Multi-Object Unrelated Parallel Machine Scheduling Problem

In this study unrelated parallel machine scheduling problem (UPMSP) with preventive maintenance (PM) and sequence dependent setup times (SDST) is investigated. A novel imperialist competitive algorithm (NICA) with multi-elite individuals guidance is proposed to minimize makespan and total tardiness simultaneously. Initialization is done by two heuristics, each of which is built based on one objective. Multi-elite individuals guidance strategy is added in assimilation that colonies can move toward other imperialists, diversified strategies such as local search and estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) are adopted based on solution quality in revolution and EDA is also used in imperialist competition. Empire aggression is added by local search of imperialist for plundering a randomly chosen colony. A number of experiments are conducted on the impact of new strategies and the comparisons among NICA and other algorithms. Computational results demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of NICA in solving UPSMP with PM and SDST.