A hybrid cuckoo search via Levy flights for the permutation flow shop scheduling problem

The permutation flow shop problem (PFSSP) is an NP-hard problem of wide engineering and theoretical background. In this paper, a cuckoo search (CS)-based memetic algorithm, called HCS, is proposed for the PFSSP. To make CS suitable for the PFSSP, a largest-ranked-value (LRV)-rule-based random key is used to convert the continuous position in CS into a discrete job permutation. The Nawaz-Enscore-Ham (NEH) heuristic is then combined with the random initialisation to initialise the population with a certain quality and diversity. After that, CS is employed to evolve nest vectors for exploration, and a fast local search is embedded to enhance the local exploitation ability. In addition, simulations and comparisons based on PFSSP benchmarks are carried out, which shows that our algorithm is both effective and efficient.