Using Ant Colony Algorithm to solve NP-Complete problems

We consider the problem of scheduling jobs on a single machine about a common due date. Our objective is to determine the common due date and processing sequence of new jobs together with the re-sequencing of old jobs which minimize the sum of jobs’ earliness/tardiness, completion time penalties and due date related penalty. We drive properties that can be used to find the optimal common due date and processing sequence. Since our problem is NP-hard, we propose Ant colony algorithm (ACO) to solve the problem efficiently. Results from computational study reveal that Ant colony algorithm (ACO) can