An Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for Minimizing the Makespan in Blocking Flowshop Scheduling Problems

This chapter addresses to the blocking flowshop scheduling problem with the aim of minimizing the makespan. An Estimation of Distribution Algorithm, followed by a local search procedure, after the step of creating a new individual, was developed in order to solve this problem. Our comparisons were performed against representative approaches proposed in the literature related to the blocking flowshop scheduling problem. The obtained results have shown that the proposed algorithm is able to improve 109 out of 120 best known solutions of Taillard’s instances. Moreover, our algorithm outperforms all competing approaches in terms of solution quality and computational time.

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