A simple two-agent system for multi-objective flexible job-shop scheduling

Abstract

In this paper, a simple two-agent multi-objective scheduling system for flexible job-shop scheduling problem is proposed and corresponding framework is given. Under the framework, a broadcast communication mechanism with task mark and leader–follower control mode are designed and used to ensure orderly activities among agents. To obtain initial solution and improve it, competition and cooperation strategies are developed. To jump out of the local optimal solution and expend the search space, an adaptive iterative loop solving mechanism is designed. Three commonly used benchmark instance sets are adopted to test the performance of the proposed method. Computation results and comparison analysis with other excellent algorithms demonstrate that it is feasible and effective.