A Heuristic Algorithm Approach for Scheduling of Multi-criteria Unrelated Parallel Machines

In this paper we address a multi-objective scheduling problem for unrelated parallel machines. In unrelated parallel systems, the processing cost/time of a given job on different machines may vary. The objective of scheduling is to simultaneously determine the job-machine assignment and job sequencing on each machine. In such a way the total cost of the schedule is minimized. The cost function consists of three components, namely; machining cost, earliness/tardiness penalties and makespan related cost. Such scheduling problem is combinatorial in nature. Therefore, a Simulated Annealing approach is employed to provide good solutions within reasonable computational times. Computational results show that the proposed approach can efficiently solve such complicated problems.