A hyperheuristic approach for intercell scheduling with single processing machines and batch processing machines

Intercell transfers in cellular manufacturing systems disrupt the philosophy of creating independent cells, but are essential for enterprises to reduce production costs. The problem of intercell scheduling with single processing machines and batch processing machines is considered in this paper, which involves an assignment subproblem, a sequencing subproblem, and a batch formation subproblem. An ant colony optimization (ACO)-based hyperheuristic (ABH) is developed in this paper, searching assignment rules for parts, sequencing rules for single processing machines, and batch formation rules for batch processing machines, simultaneously, and then using the obtained combinatorial rules to generate scheduling solutions. Computational results show that ABH is an effective and significantly efficient approach to provide near-optimum solutions even when CPLEX shows poor performance, and as compared to genetic algorithm that is widely used in hyperheuristics, ABH has better performance with respect to the problem addressed in this paper.