Scheduling unrelated parallel machines with sequence-dependent setup times

In this study, the problem of scheduling jobs on unrelated parallel machines with sequence-dependent setup times under due-date constraints is considered to minimize the total cost of tardiness and earliness. A new mathematical model is presented for considered problem and due to the complexity of the problem; an integrated meta-heuristic algorithm is designed to solve the problem. The proposed algorithm consists of genetic algorithm as the basic algorithm and simulated annealing method as local search procedure that follows the genetic algorithm to improve the quality of solutions. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by solving a set of test problems. The results show that the proposed integrated algorithm is effective.