Scheduling the blocking flow shop problem using a harmony search algorithm

This paper propose a harmony search (HS) algorithm to minimize makespan for the blocking flow shop scheduling problem. In the proposed algorithm, the HS-based search is employed to evolve harmony vectors to perform exploration, whereas a local search procedure based on the insert neighborhood is used to enhance the local exploitation ability. Extensive computational experiments and comparisons are carried out. Computational results show that the proposed HS algorithm is effective in finding optimal and near-optimal solutions.