Modified Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for Solving Flow-shop Scheduling Problem with Setup Times

To solve the flow-shop scheduling problem with sequence dependent setup times, the modified estimation of distribution algorithm was proposed. Considering the setup times dependent on sequence, multi-probability matrixes are employed in the probability model to denote the relative information about jobs in this problem. Meanwhile, the updating mechanism and an automatically adjusting method are improved to adapt to the new probability. A local search is designed to be able to jump out of the local optimum and improve the global optimization ability. Finally, simulation results are compared with other algorithms to demonstrate the effectiveness of the modified EDA.