A modified Ant Colony optimization algorithm with load balancing for job shop scheduling

Abstract

The problem of efficiently scheduling jobs on several machines is an important consideration when using Job Shop scheduling production system (JSP). JSP is known to be a NP-hard problem and hence methods that focus on producing an exact solution can prove insufficient in finding an optimal resolution to JSP. Hence, in such cases, heuristic methods can be employed to find a good solution within reasonable time. In this paper, we study the conventional ACO algorithm and propose a Load Balancing ACO algorithm for JSP. We also present the observed results, and discuss them with reference to the conventional ACO. It is observed that the proposed algorithm gives better results when compared to conventional ACO. © 2013 IEEE.