An Improved Line-Up Competition Algorithm for Unrelated Parallel Machine Scheduling with Setup Times

It is well known that with the development of economic globalization and increasing competition in the market, enterprises are facing a huge challenge in the unrelated parallel machine scheduling problem with setup time (UPMST). Determining the processing order of all jobs and assigning machines to production scheduling has become more complex and has research implications. Moreover, a reasonable production scheduling scheme can not only complete the production plan efficiently but also contribute to reducing carbon emissions. In this paper, a mathematical model with the goal of the shortest completion time is studied for the UPMST problem. An improved line-up competition algorithm (ILCA) is proposed to solve this model, and the search accuracy and rate of the algorithm are improved by the newly proposed heuristic workpiece allocation rules and variation strategies. From the perspective of evaluation purposes, the effectiveness and stability of the method are significantly superior to other methods, and it is competitive in solving the UPMST problem.