Genetic algorithms applied to the continuous flow shop problem

Abstract

This research develops an approach for applying Genetic Algorithms (GA) to scheduling problems. We generate a GA based heuristic for continuous flow shop problems with total flow time as the criterion. The effects of several crucial factors of GA on the performance of the heuristic for the problem are explored in detail. The computational experience of heuristic provides several observations of the application of GA, and strongly supports that the applications of GA are problem specific. The computational experience also shows that GA can be good techniques for scheduling problems.