Improved Simulated Annealing Algorithm for the Scheduling of Hybrid Flow-shop Problem

The hybrid flow shop problem (HFSP) is a complex combinatorial problem that arises in many real-world situations. It involves scheduling flow shops with numerous concurrent machines per stage. This paper formulates an improved simulated annealing (ISA) algorithm to lower overall flow time to tackle the hybrid flow-shop scheduling problem. The NEH heuristic algorithm is used to develop new solutions to speed up convergence. A tempering function is included to increase the results’ optimality to avoid falling into a local optimum. Extensive tests and comparisons show that the proposed technique is feasible and effective. As a result, the study’s contribution is the development of an improved algorithm that is an effective method for scheduling hybrid flow shops in an intelligent manufacturing environment.