A Comparative Study on Performance of "ant colony system" and "Linear Programming" methods in the Modeling of the Flow Shop Scheduling

Subject Areas : Industrial Management

Said Esfandyari ¹ ( M.A in Management, Jahad Daneshgahi Higher Education Institute, Yazd Branch )
Ali Morovati Sharif Abadi ² ( Assistant Professor, University of Yazd, Yazd, Iran )
Seyed Habibolah Mirghafouri ³ ( Associate Professor, University of Yazd, Yazd, Iran )
Hamid Reza Kadkhodazadeh ⁴ ( M.A in Management, Jahad Daneshgahi Higher Education Institute, Yazd Branch )

Received: 2018-01-08 Accepted : 2018-01-08 Published : 2013-05-22

Keywords:

Abstract :

Although linear programming is used widely in the world, its inefficiency in dealing with difficult problems is concerned. With the advancement in science and dealing with various problems, it tends to have problems in mass production in a short time. Heuristic and meta-heuristic techniques are the latest achievements of nonlinear programming for solving the similar problem. One area that requires programming applications in mass production is NP-scheduling problems. This paper aims at modeling and comparing the two methods of Linear Programming and Ant Colony System Algorithm in flexible flow shop scheduling problem according to the number of jobs and machines. This study is based on comparing the index of time processing, the number of constraints, optimality, and the memory size of the random numbers. Using Quasi-experimental research method, software testing tools are C-sharp and Lingo for the ant colony algorithm and linear programming respectively. The results show that linear programming model has higher performance when machines and jobs are in low numbers; however, with the rise of the machines and jobs, Ant Colony System algorithm has proven high efficiency.    

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