Graphical abstractDisplay Omitted HighlightsScheduling N jobs with non-identical job sizes from F families on M parallel BPMs is considered.The objective is to minimize the makespan.A meta-heuristic based on MMAS combined with the Multi-Fit algorithm is presented.The performance of the algorithm is compared with several previously studied algorithms.Our results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the previously studied algorithms. We study the problem of scheduling a set of N jobs with non-identical job sizes from F different families on a set of M parallel batch machines; the objective is to minimize the makespan. The problem is known to be NP-hard. A meta-heuristic based on Max-Min Ant System (MMAS) is presented. The performance of the algorithm is compared with several previously studied algorithms by computational experiments. According to our results, the average distance between the solutions found by our proposed algorithm and the lower bounds is about 4% less than that of the best of all the compared algorithms, demonstrating that our algorithm outperforms the previously studied algorithms.
['Zhao-hong Jia', 'Chao Wang', 'Joseph Y.-T. Leung']
An ACO algorithm for makespan minimization in parallel batch machines with non-identical job sizes and incompatible job families