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A hyper-heuristic ensemble method for static job-shop scheduling

Published: 01 December 2016 Publication History

Abstract

We describe a new hyper-heuristic method NELLI-GP for solving job-shop scheduling problems JSSP that evolves an ensemble of heuristics. The ensemble adopts a divide-and-conquer approach in which each heuristic solves a unique subset of the instance set considered. NELLI-GP extends an existing ensemble method called NELLI by introducing a novel heuristic generator that evolves heuristics composed of linear sequences of dispatching rules: each rule is represented using a tree structure and is itself evolved. Following a training period, the ensemble is shown to outperform both existing dispatching rules and a standard genetic programming algorithm on a large set of new test instances. In addition, it obtains superior results on a set of 210 benchmark problems from the literature when compared to two state-of-the-art hyper-heuristic approaches. Further analysis of the relationship between heuristics in the evolved ensemble and the instances each solves provides new insights into features that might describe similar instances.

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  • (2024)Survey on Genetic Programming and Machine Learning Techniques for Heuristic Design in Job Shop SchedulingIEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation10.1109/TEVC.2023.325524628:1(147-167)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2024
  • (2023)Constructing ensembles of dispatching rules for multi-objective tasks in the unrelated machines environmentIntegrated Computer-Aided Engineering10.3233/ICA-23070430:3(275-292)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
  • (2023)Instance-Rotation-Based Surrogate in Genetic Programming With Brood Recombination for Dynamic Job-Shop SchedulingIEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation10.1109/TEVC.2022.318069327:5(1192-1206)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
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Information

Published In

cover image Evolutionary Computation
Evolutionary Computation  Volume 24, Issue 4
Winter 2016
169 pages
ISSN:1063-6560
EISSN:1530-9304
Issue’s Table of Contents

Publisher

MIT Press

Cambridge, MA, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 December 2016
Published in EVOL Volume 24, Issue 4

Author Tags

  1. Job-shop-scheduling
  2. dispatching rule
  3. genetic programming.
  4. heuristic ensemble
  5. hyper-heuristic

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  • (2024)Survey on Genetic Programming and Machine Learning Techniques for Heuristic Design in Job Shop SchedulingIEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation10.1109/TEVC.2023.325524628:1(147-167)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2024
  • (2023)Constructing ensembles of dispatching rules for multi-objective tasks in the unrelated machines environmentIntegrated Computer-Aided Engineering10.3233/ICA-23070430:3(275-292)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
  • (2023)Instance-Rotation-Based Surrogate in Genetic Programming With Brood Recombination for Dynamic Job-Shop SchedulingIEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation10.1109/TEVC.2022.318069327:5(1192-1206)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Collaboration methods for ensembles of dispatching rules for the dynamic unrelated machines environmentEngineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence10.1016/j.engappai.2023.106096122:COnline publication date: 1-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Evolving ensembles of heuristics for the travelling salesman problemNatural Computing: an international journal10.1007/s11047-023-09968-922:4(671-684)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2023
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  • (2022)Combining hyper-heuristics to evolve ensembles of priority rules for on-line schedulingNatural Computing: an international journal10.1007/s11047-020-09793-421:4(553-563)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2022
  • (2022)Importance-Aware Genetic Programming for Automated Scheduling Heuristics Learning in Dynamic Flexible Job Shop SchedulingParallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XVII10.1007/978-3-031-14721-0_4(48-62)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2022
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