A genetic algorithm for hybrid flow-shop scheduling with multiprocessor tasks

The hybrid flow-shop scheduling problem with multiprocessor tasks finds its applications in real-time machine-vision systems among others. Motivated by this application and the computational complexity of the problem, we propose a genetic algorithm in this paper. We first describe the implementation details, which include a new crossover operator. We then perform a preliminary test to set the best values of the control parameters, namely the population size, crossover rate and mutation rate. Next, given these values, we carry out an extensive computational experiment to evaluate the performance of four versions of the proposed genetic algorithm in terms of the percentage deviation of the solution from the lower bound value. The results of the experiments demonstrate that the genetic algorithm performs the best when the new crossover operator is used along with the insertion mutation. This genetic algorithm also outperforms the tabu search algorithm proposed in the literature for the same problem.