Geodesy

Pairwise comparison

Algorithm

Benchmark (surveying)

Demography

Biology

Scheduling (production processes)

Operating system

Cuckoo

Particle swarm optimization

Parallel computing

Computer science

Mathematical optimization

Mathematics

Geography

Cuckoo search

Population

Sociology

Artificial intelligence

Heuristic

Schedule

Zoology

Job shop scheduling

Computers & Industrial Engineering

In this paper, we propose an improved cuckoo search algorithm (ICSA) to minimize makespan for the identical parallel-machine scheduling problem. Starting with an initial population of schedules generated by using the longest processing time (LPT) rule and the job-interchange mechanism, we select the best schedule from this population and then execute the proposed ICSA. For the ICSA, we first propose a heuristic approach using a modulus operator to transform a continuous position in CSA into discrete schedule of jobs for generating a new cuckoo by Levy flights. Next, we present a heuristic procedure based on the pairwise exchange neighborhood to produce smart cuckoos in the proposed ICSA. We then conduct exhaustive computational experimentation on a large number of randomly generated well-known benchmark problems to show that the proposed ICSA produces better solutions than the six state-of-the-art existing algorithms.

An improved cuckoo search algorithm for scheduling jobs on identical parallel machines