Abstract
A new genetic algorithm is proposed for solving job-shop scheduling problems where the total number of search points is limited. The objective of the problem is to minimize the makespan. The solution is represented by an operation sequence, i.e., a permutation of operations. The proposed algorithm is based on the framework of the parameter-free genetic algorithm. It encodes a permutation using random keys into a chromosome. A schedule is derived from a permutation using a hybrid scheduling (HS), and the parameter of HS is also encoded in a chromosome. Experiments using benchmark problems show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the previously proposed algorithms, genetic algorithm by Shi et al. and the improved local search by Nakano et al., for large-scale problems under the constraint of limited number of search points.
