MANIPULATING TABU LIST TO HANDLE MACHINE BREAKDOWNS IN JOB SHOP SCHEDULING PROBLEMS

Machine breakdowns in a production schedule may occur on a random basis that make the well-known hard combinatorial problem of Job Shop Scheduling Problems (JSSP) becomes more complex. One of popular techniques used to solve the combinatorial problems is Tabu Search. In this technique, moves that will be not allowed to be revisited are retained in a tabu list in order to avoid in gaining solutions that have been obtained previously. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to employ a second tabu list to keep broken machines, in addition to the tabu list that keeps the moves. The period of how long the broken machines will be kept on the list is categorized using fuzzy membership function. Our technique are tested to the benchmark data of JSSP available on the OR library. From the experiment, we found that our algorithm is promising to help a decision maker to face the event of machine breakdowns.