Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm for Hybrid Flow Shop Scheduling Problem with Blocking

A hybrid particle swarm optimization (HPSO) algorithm is proposed for hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with blocking. HPSO algorithm combines the PSO algorithm with release-backstepping (RB) algorithm. In HPSO, the matrix based encoding scheme is designed and RB algorithm is used to sequence jobs and obtains the objective, while PSO algorithm is employed for global optimization. Effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is validated by actual experiments.