Cooperated teaching-learning-based optimisation for distributed two-stage assembly flow shop scheduling

Two-stage assembly flow shop scheduling problem with DPm -> 1 layout has been extensively considered in single factory; however, distributed two-stage assembly flow shop scheduling problem (DTAFSP) with DPm -> 1 layout in each factory is not studied fully; moreover, teaching-learning-based optimisation is seldom used to solve DTAFSP. In this paper, a cooperated teaching-learning-based optimisation (CTLBO) is proposed to minimise makespan. Multiple classes are constructed. The whole search procedure consists of two stages and each stage possesses two teacher's phases and a learner phase. Class cooperation between the best class and the worst one is implemented by exchanging search times and search ability at the second stage and seldom adopted in the existing works. Extensive experiments are conducted and CTLBO is compared with the existing methods to test its performances. Computational results demonstrate that CTLBO has very competitive performances on solving the considered DTAFSP.