Identical parallel machine scheduling with nonlinear deterioration and multiple rate modifying activities

Abstract

This study focuses on identical parallel machine scheduling of jobs with deteriorating processing times and rate-modifying activities. We consider nonlinearly increasing processing times of jobs based on their position assignment. Rate modifying activities (RMAs) are also considered to recover the increase in processing times of jobs due to deterioration. We also propose heuristics algorithms that rely on ant colony optimization and simulated annealing algorithms to solve the problem with multiple RMAs in a reasonable amount of time. Finally, we show that ant colony optimization algorithm generates close optimal solutions and superior results than simulated annealing algorithm.