Combining Tabu Search and Genetic Algorithm in a Multi-agent System for Solving Flexible Job Shop Problem

Abstract

The Flexible Job Shop problem (FJSP) is an important extension of the classical job shop scheduling problem, in that each operation can be processed by a set of resources and has a processing time depending on the resource used. The objective is to minimize the make span, i.e., the time needed to complete all the jobs. This works aims to propose a new promising approach using multi-agent systems in order to solve the FJSP. Our model combines a local optimization approach based on Tabu Search (TS) meta-heuristic and a global optimization approach based on genetic algorithm (GA).