A Discrete Wolf Pack Algorithm for Job Shop Scheduling Problem

The job shop scheduling problem is demonstrated to be one of the NP-complete problems. Many meta-heuristics are proposed to solve this problem. In this paper, wolf pack algorithm is applied to this problem. This algorithm simulates predation behavior and prey allocation mode of wolf pack, providing a new method to solve the job shop scheduling problem. Due to the discrete characteristics of the scheduling solutions, some adjustments are added to develop a discrete wolf pack algorithm (DWPA). Also a computational result shows that DWPA has a good performance on the time efficiency and accuracy compared with other algorithms.