A tabu search and a genetic algorithm for solving a bicriteria general job shop scheduling problem

This paper deals with a general job shop scheduling problem with multiple constraints, coming from printing and boarding industry. The objective is the minimization of two criteria, the makespan and the maximum lateness, and we are interested in finding an approximation of the Pareto frontier. We propose a fast and elitist genetic algorithm based on NSGA-II for solving the problem. The initial population of this algorithm is either randomly generated or partially generated by using a tabu search algorithm, that minimizes a linear combination of the two criteria. Both the genetic and the tabu search algorithms are tested on benchmark instances from flexible job shop literature and computational results show the interest of both methods to obtain an efficient and effective resolution method. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.