Computers and Operations Research 114 (2020) 104812

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Computers and Operations Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cor

An improved particle swarm optimization algorithm to solve hybrid

flowshop scheduling problems with the effect of human factors – A
case study
M.K. Marichelvam a,∗, M. Geetha b, Ömür Tosun c
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi, Tamilnadu 626005, India
b
Department of Mathematics, Kamaraj College of Engineering and Technology, Virudhunagar, Tamilnadu 626001, India
c
Department of Management Information Systems, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper addresses the multi-stage hybrid flowshop scheduling problem with identical parallel ma-
Received 12 June 2018 chines at each stage by considering the effect of human factors. The various levels of labours and the ef-
Revised 16 September 2019
fects of their learning and forgetting are studied. The minimization of the weighted sum of the makespan
Accepted 3 October 2019
and total flow time is the objective function. Since the problem is NP-hard, an improved version of the
Available online 4 October 2019
particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is presented to solve the problem. A dispatching rule and a
Keywords: constructive heuristic are incorporated to improve the initial solutions of the PSO algorithm. The variable
Hybrid flowshop neighbourhood search (VNS) algorithm is also hybridized with the PSO algorithm to attain the optimal
NP-hard solutions consuming less computational time. An industrial scheduling problem of an automobile man-
Makespan ufacturing unit is discussed. Moreover, several instances of the random benchmark problem are used to
Flow time validate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Computational experiments have been performed
Particle swarm optimization
and the results prove the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Variable neighbourhood search
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introductions In fact, it varies due to a number of reasons, such as differing

Production scheduling is vital in any manufacturing industry
to maintain a competitive position in the fast-changing global
market. For this, effective and efficient advanced scheduling tech-
nologies and approaches are to be developed. Hybrid flowshop
(HFS) scheduling problems appear in a variety of manufacturing
systems, such as textile, furniture, iron and steel, and so on. HFS is
an extended version of flowshop scheduling which permits a job
to be processed by any one machine from a given set of machines
during a given stage. It finds equal importance in both the fields
of production management and combinatorial optimization. Due
to the strong non-deterministic polynomial-time hard (NP-hard)
nature of this problem (Gupta, 1988; Hoogeveen et al., 1996),
exact methods cannot be used to solve even small-sized prob-
lems. Therefore, researchers have addressed many heuristics and
meta-heuristics to solve these problems. It is quite common in the
scheduling literature to assume processing time to be a constant.
However, in real industrial scenarios, processing time is not fixed.
∗ (Gong et al., 2018). However, it would be difficult to compute
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: mkmarichelvamme@gmail.com, mkmarichelvam@mepcoeng.ac.in
(M.K. Marichelvam), omurtosun@akdeniz.edu.tr (Ö. Tosun).
levels of labourers, their learning and forgetting skills, and so on.
Human factors such as boredom and fatigue also disturb the
performance of labourers on the shop floor (Aravindkrishna et al.,
2009). To improve the performance of labourers, the idea of job
rotation was presented, and the genetic algorithm (GA) and impe-
rialist competitive algorithm (ICA) were suggested to solve these
job rotation scheduling problems (Ayough et al., 2012). A multi-
objective mixed integer programming model was established for
workforce scheduling. The relationships between workers’ skills,
fatigue, attitudes and strengths, and their performance while per-
forming a job were considered by the researchers (Othman et al.,
2014). Boenzi et al. (2015) addressed the effects of skill and age
of the workers and recommended a job rotation model to increase
system performance. Calzavara et al. (2019) also considered the
problems of ageing of labourers. The researchers presented a
comprehensive literature review on the management of an ageing
workforce in manufacturing industries. They highlighted that more
work should be done on the impact of the aging of workers
on production systems. The investigators stated that the consid-
eration of human factors would improve production efficiency
the human factors such as boredom, fatigue levels, attitudes and
strengths (Bidanda et al. 2005). Moreover, the objective of the

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2019.104812
0305-0548/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 M.K. Marichelvam, M. Geetha and Ö. Tosun / Computers and Operations Research 114 (2020) 104812
current work is to satisfy customers of the collaborative enterprise
by sending goods on time by bearing in mind the learning and the
forgetting factors of workers, as suggested by the company.
In this study, a multi-stage HFS scheduling problem with
identical parallel machines in each stage is therefore addressed
along with the effects of human factors. An improved particle
swarm optimization (IPSO) algorithm is proposed to solve the HFS
scheduling problem to minimize the weighted sum of makespan
and total flow time. The proposed algorithm is validated using an
industrial scheduling problem and random benchmark problem
instances. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows.
A brief review of literature is presented in Section 2. The HFS
scheduling problem is defined in Section 3. The proposed algo-
rithm is explained in detail in Section 4. Section 5 presents the
computational results. Finally, the conclusions and future research
opportunities are discussed in Section 6.
2. Literature review
This section presents a literature review on hybrid flowshop
scheduling and the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm.
2.1. Hybrid flowshop scheduling
The HFS scheduling problem was first developed by
Arthanari and Ramamurthy (1971). The variants of the HFS
scheduling problems concerning the scheduling environment,
objective functions, assumptions, constraints, and the solu-
tion techniques can be found in three essential review papers
(Linn and Zhang, 1999; Ribas et al., 2010; Ruiz and Vázquez-
Rodríguez, 2010). From the above literature review papers, it is
evident that makespan is the most important single objective
function addressed by several researchers. However, in real in-
dustrial scheduling problems, many goals are to be met. Another
important conclusion from the above review papers is that there
is a wide gap between the theoretical and practical scheduling
research. Most of the research works focus only on theory. Hence,
in this work, an attempt has been made to tackle HFS scheduling
problems with the objective of minimization of the weighted sum
of makespan and total flow time. The effect of human factors, such
as the learning and forgetting factors is also addressed.
In scheduling theory, it is assumed that processing times are
fixed. However, this is not a realistic assumption. When workers
perform a similar job several times, the workers’ skill will improve
and processing times may decrease. This is called a learning effect
in the scheduling literature (Biskup, 1999). Biskup calculated the
processing time for different jobs according to their positions. The
learning effect was first studied by Wright (1936). The concept
of the learning effect was first used to estimate the number of
airplanes that could be produced for a specific number of men
and machines. Mosheiov (2001) proposed several polynomial
algorithms to solve the single machine and parallel machine
scheduling problems with the learning effect. They considered
many single and multiple-objectives in their work. Wang and
Xia (2005) proposed heuristics to solve the flowshop scheduling
problems with learning effects to minimize the makespan and
total flow time. Biskup (2008) presented a review on schedul-
ing problems with learning effects. He addressed the various
position-based and the sum of the processing time-based learning
effects. He pointed out the significance of learning effects when
production environments are changed.
İşler et al. (2011) addressed a two-machine flowshop scheduling
problem to minimize total earliness and tardiness. They considered
position dependent learning effects and developed heuristics based
on tabu search (TS) and the GA to solve the problem. However,
a two-machine flowshop scheduling problem has no practical
significance. Pargar and Zandieh (2012) addressed a flexible
flowshop (FFS) scheduling problem with the position-dependent
learning effects for setup times. They proposed a water flow like
(WFA) algorithm to minimize the weighted sum of makespan
and total tardiness. They concluded that the performance of the
WFA was superior to random key GA (RKGA). Behnamian and
Zandieh (2013) addressed an HFS scheduling problem with
position-based learning effects and sequence-dependent setup
times to minimize the weighted sum of tardiness and earliness.
They proposed a hybrid metaheuristic based on the PSO, simulated
annealing (SA) algorithm and variable neighbourhood search (VNS)
algorithms. The proposed algorithm was compared with a hybrid
SA for the random problem instances. Seidgar et al. (2015) sug-
gested a new mathematical model to solve the FFS scheduling
problem with sequence dependent setup times to minimize the
weighted sum of earliness and makespan by considering the
learning and forgetting effects of workers. They demonstrated the
model with a two-stage problem. Mousavi et al. (2018a) addressed
a re-entrant HFS scheduling problem with the position-based
learning effect to minimize the makespan and total tardiness.
They proposed a VNS based on a priori approach, namely VNS-PA
and evaluated the performance of the proposed algorithm using
random problem instances.
Recently, Mousavi et al. (2018b) presented a GA to solve the
HFS scheduling problem with makespan and the total tardiness
objective. They considered several realistic assumptions such as re-
entrant lines, setup times and position-dependent learning effects
in their work. Pargar et al. (2018) proposed two solution methods
based on the hybrid water flow like algorithm (HWFA) and non-
dominated sorting and ranking concepts to solve HFS scheduling
problems with the learning effect of workers. The objective was
to minimize makespan and tardiness. They used randomly gen-
erated problem instances to illustrate the proposed algorithm.
Shahvari and Logendran (2018) addressed an HFS batch scheduling
problem to minimize the weighted sum of the total weighted
completion time and total weighted tardiness. They considered se-
quence and machine dependent family setup times in their work.
Two sets of metaheuristics were developed to solve the problem.
However, they used a number of random problem instances only
to validate the performance of the proposed algorithms.
From the above literature review, it is evident that most of the
scheduling problems considered only the position-based learning
effect (Biskup 2008). No work has addressed the HFS scheduling
problems by considering the effect of workers to solve the real
industrial scheduling problem.
2.2. Particle swarm optimization
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) was first developed by
Kennedy and Eberhart (1995) to solve the problems of non-linear
programming and constrained optimization comprising continuous
variables. It was stimulated by the variation of a natural system
based on the metaphor of social communication and interaction.
The PSO has been successfully applied to solve various optimiza-
tion problems. The PSO algorithm was used for minimizing the
makespan and total flow time for the permutation flowshop se-
quencing problems by Tasgetiren et al. (2007). They tested the per-
formance of the proposed algorithm with the benchmark problems
addressed in the literature. A discrete version of PSO (DPSO) and
an improved version of PSO (IPSO) were respectively introduced
by Pan et al. (2008) and Zhang et al. (2008) to solve flowshop
scheduling problems. Tseng and Liao (2008) presented the PSO
algorithm to solve multistage HFS scheduling problems with mul-
tiprocessor tasks. New encoding was implemented in the proposed
PSO algorithm, and a modified velocity equation and neighbour-
hood topology were suggested. Finally, an active local search
 M.K. Marichelvam, M. Geetha and Ö. Tosun / Computers and Operations Research 114 (2020) 104812
heuristic was incorporated. Anghinolfi and Paolucci (2009) de-
veloped a new DPSO algorithm to minimize the total weighted
lag for single machine scheduling problems. A discrete model
was used for both particle position and velocity in addition to
introducing a coherent sequence metric. They conducted exper-
iments on the benchmark problems to validate the performance
of the proposed algorithm. Kashan & Karimi (2009) suggested
a DPSO algorithm to minimize the makespan in a parallel ma-
chine scheduling environment. The DPSO was hybridized with
local search heuristics to obtain optimal solutions for benchmark
problems. Pongchairerks and Kachitvichyanukul (2009) solved job
shop scheduling problems using a two-level PSO algorithm. Sha
& Lin (2009) presented a PSO based multi-objective algorithm
that solved the flowshop scheduling problems to minimize the
makespan, mean flow time and machine idle time. They applied
a mutation operator with the PSO algorithm to avoid any local
optima. Tang and Wang (2010) developed an IPSO to tackle HFS
scheduling problems and local search algorithms were incorpo-
rated into the PSO algorithm. They considered the scheduling
problem in the iron and steel industry. The results indicated that
the IPSO performed better than the Lagrangian relaxation algo-
rithm and the TS algorithm. Liang et al. (2011) solved the blocking
flowshop scheduling problem using a dynamic multi-swarm par-
ticle swarm optimizer. Small swarms, a regrouping scheme, and
a particular designed local search operator were proposed to
improve the solution quality in the proposed algorithm.
Singh and Mahapatra (2012) solved FFS scheduling problems
with an makespan objective using the PSO algorithm. They in-
corporated the mutation operator with the PSO algorithm to
avoid the solutions trapped at a local optimum. They compared
the results with different versions of the GA. The computational
results revealed the effectiveness of the proposed PSO algorithm.
Wang and Tang (2012) studied DPSO to solve flowshop scheduling
problems with blocking to minimize makespan. The PSO algorithm
was also addressed to solve other optimization problems such
as multi-modal problems (Cho et al., 2011), crew scheduling
problems (Azadeh et al., 2012), optimal warehouse design prob-
lems (Sooksaksun et al., 2012), continuous optimisation functions
(Rameshkumar et al., 2012) and the vehicle routing problem
(Geetha et al., 2013). Damodaran et al. (2012) addressed the PSO
algorithm to minimize makespan in non-identical parallel batch
processing machine scheduling problems. The performance of
the PSO algorithm was compared with that of the RKGA and
a commercial solver for random problem instances. Due to its
effectiveness, the PSO algorithm was implemented in the printed
circuit board (PCB) industry. A new algorithm was developed
by Liao et al. (2012) by hybridizing the PSO algorithm and the
bottleneck heuristic algorithm to minimize makespan to solve
HFS scheduling problems. Simulated annealing based local search
heuristics was used to improve the solution quality of benchmark
problems. Shiau and Huang (2012) presented a hybrid two-phase
encoding PSO algorithm to tackle proportionate FFS scheduling
problems. They designed a sequence position value representation
in the first phase which was based on the smallest position value
(SPV) rule. In the second phase, an absolute position value rep-
resentation was combined with the TS, which avoided premature
convergence by improving swarm diversity.
A parallel branch & bound (B&B) method, sequential PSO and
parallel PSO were proposed to solve job shop scheduling problems
with blocking (AitZai and Boudhar 2013). A new parallelization
technique based on the logical ring topology was developed in the
B&B method. Two different ways of encoding scheme were used
in the sequential PSO algorithm. In the parallel PSO algorithm, the
master computer was committed to execute elementary operations
while the other processors evaluated individuals. The performance
of both the sequential PSO and the parallel PSO algorithm was
3
compared and it was concluded that parallel PSO algorithm per-
formed better. The PSO algorithm was combined with the cocktail
decoding method to solve multiprocessor task-scheduling in an
HFS to minimize the makespan (Chou 2013). The HFS problem
was decomposed into two sequential decision problems. First, the
job permutation was determined in stage 1 and then a decoding
method was used to assign jobs to each machine in subse-
quent stages. An improved hybrid PSO (IHPSO) was addressed
by Marichelvam and Prabaharan (2015) to solve real industrial
scheduling problems resembling the HFS scheduling environment.
They used two different sub-populations for the two objectives,
namely makespan and total flow time. The dispatching rules were
incorporated to improve the effectiveness of the algorithm. The
mutation operator was also used to prevent the solution from
being trapped at the local optima. Wu et al. (2018) addressed six
variants of the hybrid PSO (HPSO) algorithm to solve assembly
flowshop scheduling problems in two stages and with three ma-
chines. They considered the learning effect of workers to minimize
total flow time. They tested the performance of the proposed
algorithm with a number of benchmark problem instances.
From the above literature review and in the open literature,
it is evident that no work has occurred addressing PSO to solve
real industrial HFS scheduling problems by considering the effect
of workers. Therefore, the present study aims to address real HFS
scheduling problems with different level of workers. The problem
definition is presented in the following section.
3. Problem definition
A set of n jobs is to be processed consecutively in M stages.
Each stage consists of ms identical parallel machines. Some stages
may have only one machine. However, at least one stage must
have multiple machines and each job consists of different op-
erations which are performed by any one of the machines at
each stage. For example, the second operation of the job will be
performed during the second stage. The processing time of job j
at stage s is Psj . In the scheduling literature, it is assumed that the
processing time is fixed. However, due to the effect of workers,
the processing time can vary. The various impacts of workers may
be the skill, age, learning and forgetting factors. The problem is to
determine an optimum schedule to minimize the weighted sum of
makespan and total flow time. Makespan is essential for effective
resource utilization while flow time is vital for the reduction of
the inventory carrying cost.
The general mathematical model is given below.
min Z = w1Cmax + w2 f (1)
Subject to:
Cmax ≥ C js , f or all s = 1, 2, . . . , M, j = 1, 2, . . . , n, (2)
C js = S js + Ps j , (3)

ms
Y jis = 1, for all s = 1, 2, . . . , M, j = 1, 2, . . . , n, (4)
i=1
Cjs ≤ Sj (s+1) , for s = 1, 2, . . . , M − 1, (5)
Shs ≥ Cjs − KWhjs , for all job pairs (h, j ), (6)
Sjs ≥ Chs + K − 1, for all job pairs (h, j ), (7)
Sj1 ≥ Rj for all j = 1, 2, . . . , n, (8)
Yjis ∈ {0, 1}, Wjhj ∈ {0, 1}, for all j = 1, . . . , n,
i = 1, 2, . . . , ms , and s = 1, 2, . . . , M. (9)
Cjs ≥ 0, for all s = 1, 2, . . . , M, j = 1, 2, . . . , n, (10)
4 M.K. Marichelvam, M. Geetha and Ö. Tosun / Computers and Operations Research 114 (2020) 104812

Table 1 Table 2
Skill factors of different categories of labours. Age factors of different categories of labours.

Sl. No. Skill level of labours Skill factor Sl. No. Age of labours Age factor

1 Skilled 0.9 1 20-30 years old 0.8

2 Semi-skilled 1.0 2 30-40 years old 0.9
3 Unskilled 1.1 3 40-50 years old 1.0
4 > 50 years 1.1

 Table 3
f= CjM − Rj for all j = 1, 2, . . . , n, (11) Learning factors of different categories of labours.

Sl. No. Type of labours Learning factor

f≥0 (12)
1 Fresher 1.1
w1 ≥ 0 (13) 2 Experienced 1.0
3 Younger (upto 30 years old) 1.0
4 Older (more than 30 years old) 1.1
w2 ≥ 0 (14)

Table 4
w1 + w2 = 1 (15)
Forgetting factors of different categories of
labours.
Eq. (1) represents the objective function. Eq. (2) ensures that
the makespan is at least equal to the completion times of the last Sl. No. Age of labours Age factor
job. Because the objective is to minimize the makespan, the equa- 1 20-30 years old 1.0
tions in this set will be tight at optimality whenever Cmax is pos- 2 30-40 years old 1.0
itive. Eq. (3) corresponds to the computation of the completion 3 40-50 years old 0.90
4 > 50 years 0.8
time of the job. Eq. (4) ensures that each job is assigned to exactly
one machine at each stage. Eq. (5) forces to start the processing of
each job only when it has been completed during the preceding
stage. Eqs. (6) and (7) ensure that only one job occurs on a ma- 3.2. Age factor
chine per stage at any one time. When Whjs = 1, and job h is before
job j, Eq. (6) is trivially satisfied. Eq. (7) requires that the starting In a company, workers of different age groups are employed.
time of job j at stage s must occur after the completion time for For analysis purposes, workers are grouped into four different cat-
job h. When Whjs = 0, indicating that job j precedes job h, Eq. (7) is egories, namely:
trivially satisfied and the starting time of job h at stage s must oc-
i 20-30 years old;
cur after the completion time for job j at stage s to satisfy Eq. (6).
ii 30-40 years old;
Eq. (8) bounds the job starting times to occur after the job release
iii 40-50 years old; and
times in the system. Eq. (9) forces both variables Yjis and Whjs to
iv Over 50 years.
assume binary values of 0 or 1. Eq. (11) is the calculation of the
flow time. Eqs. (10) and (12–14) represent the non-negative con- The age factor is important as it affects the skill, learning
straints. Eq. (15) indicates that the sum of the weights is to be 1. and forgetting factors. The age factors of different categories of
However, in the HFS scheduling problem with the effects of labourers are presented in Table 2. The values are assigned after
labours, the actual processing time is expressed as a function of discussions with supervisors on the shop floor.
the observed processing time as well as the other factors men-
tioned above. The actual processing time is determined using the
3.3. Learning factor
following equation.

Ps j_act = Ps j × α × β × γ × λ
Where,α is the skill factor of the workers;β is the age factor of
the workers;γ is the learning factor of the workers; andλ is the
forgetting factor of the workers.
The above four elements are explained in the following section.
3.1. Skill factor
In general, workers with different skill level are employed in
industries. Based on the skill factors, workers are classified as:
i Skilled labourers;
ii Unskilled labourers; and
iii Semi-skilled labourers.
Skilled labourers are those with adequate theoretical and prac-
tical knowledge to perform their jobs. Semi-skilled labourers have
only the theoretical knowledge, while unskilled workers have nei-
ther theoretical nor practical expertise. The skill factors of different
categories of labourers are presented in Table 1. The values are as-
signed after discussions with top executives and supervisors on the
shop floor.
(16) The learning factor is a function of both the age factor and
the skill factor. At lower ages, the learning factor is higher, i.e.,
the labourer can easily understand a process and hence the
processing time will be lower. On the other hand, the learning
factor will be lower. The learning factor also depends on whether
the employee is a fresher or an experienced worker. For various
workers, the learning factor is assigned after discussions with the
Human Resource Development (HRD) department. These values
are presented in Table 3.
3.4. Forgetting factor
When labourers are performing different types of jobs, they
may forget the previous job. This is called a forgetting effect in the
scheduling literature. However, in this work, when the age of the
worker increases, he may forget a process, i.e., the forgetting factor
depends on the age factor. As age increases, the workers’ capability
of performing a job will decrease, i.e., an older worker needs more
time to complete a job than a younger worker. The forgetting fac-
tors of different categories of labourers are presented in Table 4.
The values are assigned after discussions with supervisors on the
shop floor.
 M.K. Marichelvam, M. Geetha and Ö. Tosun / Computers and Operations Research 114 (2020) 104812
By considering all the above factors, the actual processing
times are calculated. From the actual processing times, the
objective function values are calculated.
We consider the following assumptions in this paper.
• The number of stages and the number of machines at each
stage are known in advance.
• The numbers of jobs, their processing times are known in ad-
vance and are fixed.
• All the jobs and the machines are available at time zero.
• No pre-emption is allowed.
• The setup and transportation times of the jobs are independent
of the sequence and are included in the processing times.
• Each machine can process only one job at a time.
• All the machines are available for the entire period of schedul-
ing. (no machine breakdown)
To solve the above problem, an improved particle swarm opti-
mization (IPSO) algorithm is proposed and is explained in the fol-
lowing section.
4. Proposed algorithm
The proposed algorithm is presented in this section.
4.1. Particle swarm optimization algorithm
Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is one of the population-
based optimization algorithms inspired by the social behaviour
of birds. In PSO, each solution is referred to as a particle, each of
which is benefiting from its own experience and the experience of
other particles. A population of initial solutions is randomly gen-
erated in the PSO algorithm. In this work, the number of particles
in the population is assumed to be equal to the number of jobs to
be scheduled. Each particle in PSO has a position and velocity. The
velocity of each particle depends on its own experience and the
experience of other particles.
If the search space is D – dimensional, then the position and the
velocity of the ith particle may be represented as Xi = (Xi1 , Xi2 ,…,
XiD ) and Vi = (Vi1 , Vi2 ,…, ViD ) respectively. Then the position and
the velocity of the ith particle at the tth iteration is given by Xi t
and Vi t , respectively. The velocity and position of the particles at
the t+1th iteration are then calculated according to Eqs. (17) and
(18).
Vidt+1 = Vidt + crand (Pidt − Xidt ) + crand (Gtid − Xidt )
Xidt+1 = Xidt + Vidt+1
In Eq. (17), c is a constant for acceleration. The value is usually
assumed to be within [0-1]. New solutions are obtained and the
steps are repeated to achieve an optimal or near-optimal solution.
The steps in the simple PSO algorithm are given below:
1 Initialization of particles;
2 Finding the local best position of the particles;
3 Initializing the velocity of the particles;
4 Evaluating the objective function value for each particle;
5 Determining the global best position of the particles;
6 Updating the position and velocity of the particles; and
7 When the desired number of iterations is met, stop; otherwise,
return to step 2.
4.2. Improved particle swarm optimization algorithm
Researchers have concluded that the best solutions may be
found for real optimization problems with hybrid meta-heuristics
(Talbi, 2002). Hence, in this work, a dispatching rule and con-
structive heuristics are hybridized with the PSO algorithm. The
proposed IPSO algorithm is described below.
5
Table 5
Solution representation of PSO.
Dimension j
1 2 3 4
xij 0.32 0.25 0.68 0.46
Jobs 2 1 4 3
4.2.1. Definition of parameters
The population size (N), number of iterations (I), self-learning
factor (C1 ) and global learning factor (C2 ), and other required
parameters are defined first.
4.2.2. Initialization of particles
Similar to many meta-heuristic algorithms, PSO also operates
with a set of random solutions simultaneously. To obtain better
solutions, the shortest processing time (SPT) dispatching rule and
a constructive heuristic developed by Nawaz, Enscore, and Ham
(NEH) are incorporated with initial random solutions. This may
generate near-optimal solutions rapidly. The SPT dispatching rule
and NEH heuristics are explained below.
4.2.2.1. SPT dispatching rule. This is one of the most straightfor-
ward dispatching rules such that jobs are arranged in ascending
order of their processing time. Baker and Trietsch (2009) proved
that SPT would minimize total flow time and makespan.
4.2.2.2. NEH heuristics. A constructive heuristic algorithm was
developed by Nawaz et al. (1983) to solve the n jobs and m
machines permutation flowshop scheduling problems to minimize
the makespan. This is called as the NEH heuristic. In the proposed
IPSO algorithm, the NEH heuristic is used to generate one of the
initial solutions. The sum of processing time for all the jobs at
every stage is calculated, and then the NEH heuristic is applied.
The NEH heuristic consists of three steps:
1 All the jobs are sorted according to the descending sums of
their processing times, giving a sequence of jobs.
2 The first two jobs from the sequence are taken and the two par-
tial possible schedules are evaluated. Then, the better sequence
is selected as a current sequence.
3 Job i, i=3,..., n is taken and find the best schedule by placing it
in all of the possible ith positions in the sequence of jobs that
are already scheduled are found. The best partial sequence is
(17)
selected for the next iteration.
(18)
The remaining N-2 solutions are generated randomly.
4.2.2.3. Solution representation. To obtain the remaining N-2 solu-
tions, real random numbers are generated between [0, 1]. These
random numbers are considered to be random positions of the
particles. To convert the continuous position of the particles
into the discrete job permutation, the SPV rule described by
Bean (1994) is applied. The solution representation for a four-job
problem is illustrated in Table 5.
The smallest position value is xti2 = 0.25, and the dimension
j = 2 is assigned to be the first job in the permutation according to
the SPV rule. The second smallest position value is xti1 = 0.32, and
the dimension j=1 is assigned to be the second job in the per-
mutation. Similarly, all the jobs are assigned in the permutation.
Hence, the job sequence is 2 –1–4–3.
4.3. Evaluation of the objective function
The objective function value is calculated for all the particles
generated earlier. The personal best position is determined from
the objective function value obtained. The initial velocity of the
6 M.K. Marichelvam, M. Geetha and Ö. Tosun / Computers and Operations Research 114 (2020) 104812

particles is the absolute difference between the initial position Table 6

Different stages and number of machines.
and the personal best position of the particles. The particle with
the minimum objective function value is the global best particle Sl. No. Name of the stage Number of machines
and the corresponding position is the global best position. 1 Preforming 3
2 Trimming 4
4.4. Updating the velocity 3 Forming 2
4 Hole piercing 2
5 Centre piercing 5
By knowing the personal and global best positions, the velocity 6 Cropping 1
of the ith particle is updated by Eq. (19). 7 Joggling 2
    8 Finishing 2
Vid t+1 = Vid t + C1 r1 Pid t − −Xid t + C2 r2 Gglobal t − −Xid t (19)
In the above equation, C1 is the self-learning factor; C2 is the Table 7
global learning factor, r1 and r2 are random numbers between (0, Processing times of jobs (in seconds).
1). In this work, it is assumed that the particles gain 50 percent
Jobs
of knowledge from their own experience and the remaining 50 Stages 1 2 3 4 5 6
percent from the other particles.

4.5. Updating the position Preforming 540 600 660 720 600 720
Trimming 300 360 540 360 540 330
Forming 360 540 540 540 420 390
After updating the velocity of the particles, the position of the Hole piercing 300 360 420 300 270 300
particles is also updated by Eq. (18). After updating the positions Centre piercing 360 390 300 420 360 300
of the particles, the new permutations are determined using the Cropping 360 360 540 420 300 390
SPV rule. For the new permutations, the objective function values Joggling 300 210 300 300 270 270
Finishing 180 270 180 180 210 180
are calculated. Then the steps mentioned above are repeated to
obtain the near-optimal solution.
Table 8
4.6. Solution improvement Order and delivery details for the past 5 years.

Year Number of orders received Number of orders delivered on time

After obtaining the near optimal solution using PSO, the
2012 60 56
variable neighbourhood search (VNS) algorithm (Mladenović and 2013 58 53
Hansen, 1997) is used to improve the solution. For the near 2014 56 51
optimal solution obtained by the PSO, a set of neighbourhood 2015 52 46
2016 48 41
structures is generated. The shaking procedure is used to obtain
a new solution in the neighbourhood of the current solution. The
adjacent pairwise interchange scheme and swap (or exchange) Table 9
scheme are used in the neighbourhood search. A local search algo- Percentage of late deliveries for the past 5
rithm is used to improve the new solution. The improved solution years.
is compared with the near optimal solution in terms of the objec- Year % of orders not delivered on time
tive function value and the best solution is obtained. This process
2012 6.67
is repeated until the stopping condition is reached. The number of
2013 8.62
generations is used as the stopping criterion in this work. 2014 8.92
The proposed IPSO is coded in C++ and run on a PC with 2015 11.53
an Intel Core Duo 2.4 GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, running Windows 2016 14.58
XP. Each problem instance is run ten times with different initial
solutions and the average objective function value is considered.
The computational results are presented in the following section. trimming, forming, hole piercing, centre piercing, cropping, jog-
gling and finishing. Brake dust covers are produced in lot sizes of
5. Computational experiments 60. The different stages and the number of machines are presented
in Table 6 and the processing time of the jobs is presented in
Two types of experiment are conducted to validate the perfor- Table 7.
mance of the proposed algorithm. First, a real industrial scheduling The case study company has received regular orders from the
problem is considered, and then some random benchmark prob- customers. However, they have not been able to deliver the brake
lems are addressed. dust covers on time as they did not consider the effect of human
factors. The number of orders received and details of the number
5.1. Industrial scheduling problem of orders delivered on time for the past five years is given in
Table 8. The batch size for different orders varies and not consid-
The scheduling problem of a brake dust cover manufacturing ered in this research. From the above table, the percentage of the
industry in Hosur, India is considered in this paper. A brake dust number of orders not delivered on time is calculated and is shown
cover is used to prevent dust accumulation. The collaborative com- in Table 9. Due to such late delivery, the level of customer satisfac-
pany is 27 years old and supplies dust covers to several prominent tion decreases, leading to top management of the company com-
companies in the automotive sector in India. The annual turnover mitting to investigate. It was found that the company could not
of the company is 50 million INR. The company produces a variety deliver the customers’ orders as they did not complete production
of dust covers, among which the BDC AV1 model is considered within the minimum total completion time. This was due to inef-
in this research. Each brake dust cover consists of six parts and fective scheduling. The inefficient schedule was due to the lack of
the production system comprises eight stages, namely preforming, consideration given to the human factors in the organization. The
 M.K. Marichelvam, M. Geetha and Ö. Tosun / Computers and Operations Research 114 (2020) 104812 7

Table 10 Table 11
MRDI comparison of different algorithms for the indus- Factor levels for the design of experiments.
trial scheduling problem.
Sl. No. Factors Levels
Sl. No. Algorithms MRDI
1. Number of jobs 20, 50 and 100
1 GA (İşler et al., 2011) 2.34 2. Number of stages 5, 10 and 20
2 GA (Mousavi et al., 2018) 1.93 3. Number of machines in each stage 2, 3 and 5
3 HWFA (Pargar et al., 2018) 2.52 4. Processing time distribution Uniform (1-100)
4 NEH 4.16 5. Skill factor of the workers 0.9, 1.0 and 1.1
5 SPT 4.38 6. Age factor of the workers 0.8, 0.9, 1.0 and 1.1
6 TS (İşler et al., 2011) 3.42 7. Learning factor of the workers 1.0 and 1.1
7 VNS-PA (Mousavi et al., 2016) 3.53 8. Forgetting effect of the workers 0.8, 0.9 and 1.0
8 WFA (Pargar and Zandieh, 2012) 2.86 9. Population size 100 and 200
9 IPSO 0 10. Number of generations 200 and 500

company operates in shifts of 10 h per day. Each machine is oper-
ated by labourers with varying skills, ages and levels of motivation.
In a collaborative industry, workers with three different levels
of talent are working, including skilled, unskilled and semi-skilled.
The behaviour of these three types of workers differs greatly. Sim-
ilarly, there are four different age groups working for the company,
these being up to 25 years, 25 to 40 years, 40 to 50 years and
over 50. As age increases, learning ability decreases and forgetting
will increase. Hence, operators are classified as various categories,
and values are assigned as discussed in Section 3. These different
factors are involved in the determination of actual processing time.
At present, the company does not use any scheduling method or
algorithm. The simple first in first out (FIFO) dispatching rule is
practiced by the company. Hence, the proposed algorithm has
been suggested and presented to the management of the company
for the development of the organization.
To validate the performance of the proposed IPSO algorithm,
the results are compared with the SPT dispatching rule, NEH
heuristics, GA (İşler et al., 2011), GA (Mousavi et al., 2018b), HWFA
(Pargar et al., 2018), TS (İşler et al., 2011), VNS-PA (Mousavi et al.,
2018a), and WFA (Pargar and Zandieh, 2012). The parameters
and the stopping criterion used in the present study are similar
to those used in the respective papers in the literature. Each
algorithm is run 20 times with different initial solutions. The
Mean Relative Deviation Index (MRDI) is a performance measure
used to compare the performance of the proposed IPSO and other
algorithms. The MRDI is calculated using Eq. (20). The MRDI
comparisons of different algorithms for the industrial scheduling
problem is shown in Table 10.

R
(Z ∗ − Za lg )
MRDI = × 100/R
Z∗
b=1
where,Z∗ is the best makespan value obtained;Zalg is the makespan
value obtained by different algorithms; andR is the number of the
run for each algorithm.
From the MRDI values, it is concluded that the performance
of the proposed IPSO is better than the SPT dispatching rule,
NEH heuristics and GA (İşler et al., 2011), GA (Mousavi et al.,
2018b), HWFA (Pargar et al., 2018), TS (İşler et al., 2011), VNS-PA
(Mousavi et al., 2018a), and WFA (Pargar and Zandieh, 2012).
This is due to the generation of two initial solutions using the
dispatching rule and constructive heuristic. Moreover, the PSO is
hybridized with the VNS.
5.2. Random problem instances
Simulation experiments are performed with different parameter
settings to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm.
The factor levels for the design of experiments are given in
Table 11. A total of 3 × 3 × 3 × 1 × 3 × 4 × 2 × 3 × 2 × 2 = 7776 ex-
periments were performed. The proposed algorithm was compared
Table 12
MPDI comparison of different algorithms for the random
benchmark problem instances.
Sl. No. Algorithms MRDI
1 GA (İşler et al., 2011) 2.61
2 GA (Mousavi et al., 2018) 2.08
3 HWFA (Pargar et al., 2018) 2.78
4 TS (İşler et al., 2011) 3.64
5 VNS-PA (Mousavi et al., 2016) 3.76
6 WFA (Pargar and Zandieh, 2012) 3.02
7 IPSO 0
with GA (İşler et al., 2011), GA (Mousavi et al., 2018b), HWFA
(Pargar et al., 2018), TS (İşler et al., 2011), VNS-PA (Mousavi et al.,
2018a) and WFA (Pargar and Zandieh, 2012). The parameters and
the stopping criterion used in the present study are similar to
those used in the respective papers from the literature. The per-
centage deviation index (PDI) is used as a performance measure
to compare the performance of different algorithms. The PDI is
calculated thus:
ZAlgorithms − Z ∗
PDI = × 100 (21)
Z∗
where ZAlgorithms is the objective function value obtained using
different algorithms and Z∗ is the optimal objective function value
obtained. The mean PDI (MPDI) is calculated from the PDI values
using Eq. (22).

7776
MPDI = P DI/7776 (22)
p=1
The MPDI values are presented in Table 12. From the MPDI val-
(20)
ues, it can be concluded that the proposed IPSO performed better
than the GA (İşler et al., 2011), GA (Mousavi et al., 2018b), HWFA
(Pargar et al., 2018), TS (İşler et al., 2011), VNS-PA (Mousavi et al.,
2018a), and WFA (Pargar and Zandieh, 2012). From the above
result tables, it is evident that the proposed IPSO performed far
better than many other algorithms addressed in the literature for
both the real-world case study and random problem instances.
Statistical analysis was conducted to prove the effectiveness of
the proposed IPSO algorithm. The following section illustrates the
statistical analysis performed in the present work.
5.3. Statistical analysis
5.3.1. Friedman test
The Friedman test (Friedman two-way analysis of variance
by ranks) is a non-parametric test equivalent to the two-way
analysis of variance. Under the null hypothesis, it states that all
the algorithms are equivalent, so a rejection of this hypothesis
implies the existence of differences among the performance of all
the algorithms studied. The Friedman test ranks the algorithms for
each data set separately. The best performing algorithm receives
8 M.K. Marichelvam, M. Geetha and Ö. Tosun / Computers and Operations Research 114 (2020) 104812

Table 13 gorithm is hybridized with PSO. The proposed IPSO algorithm was
Ranks achieved by the Friedman Test.
validated with a case study problem that resembles the HFS envi-
Algorithms Friedman ronment and also with randomly generated benchmark problems.
GA (İşler et al., 2011) 3.54
The results revealed the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
GA (Mousavi et al., 2018)] 2.23 The present work is restricted to the performance measure of
HWFA (Pargar et al., 2018) 4.02 the weighted sum of makespan and total flow time only. However,
TS (İşler et al., 2011) 6.21 there are several other performance measures. Hence, the present
VNS-PA (Mousavi et al., 2016) 6.38
work can be extended by considering these other performance
WFA (Pargar and Zandieh, 2012) 4.62
IPSO 1.00 measures and even for multi objective scheduling models. In the
p-value 0.00 current work, the parallel machines at each stage were discussed.
It may also be essential to use the proposed algorithm to solve
HFS scheduling problems with unrelated or non-uniform machines
Table 14
Descriptive statistics. during each stage. The IPSO algorithm may be applied to solving
other types of scheduling problems. Many other real industrial
Algorithms N Mean Std. Deviation Minimum Maximum
issues may be considered to fill the gap between the theory and
GA1 7776 2.6121 .29052 2.11 3.11 practice of scheduling.
GA2 7776 2.0800 .28531 1.58 2.58
HWFA 7776 2.7786 .28859 2.28 3.28
TS 7776 3.6373 .28730 3.14 4.14
Funding
VNS_PA 7776 3.7572 .43207 3.00 4.50
WFA 7776 3.0216 .57543 2.02 4.02 This research did not receive any specific grant from funding
IPSO 7776 .0000 .00000 .00 .00 agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Table 15 Declaration of Competing Interest

Wilcoxon sign test results.

Comparison R+ R− p-value
None.

IPSO versus GA1 7776 0 0,00

Acknowledgments
IPSO versus GA2 7776 0 0,00
IPSO versus HWFA 7776 0 0,00
IPSO versus TS 7776 0 0,00 The authors are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers and
IPSO versus VNS-PA 7776 0 0,00 editors for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions.
IPSO versus WFA 7776 0 0,00
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