Enhancement of Job Shop Scheduling with Time Windows Using a Wise Select Ant Colony Optimization

Provided with efficiency and effectiveness, Ant colony optimization (ACO) is a well applied heuristic in a wide variety of production scheduling environment. This study, for improving the touch panel assembly line problem, proposes a new type of state transition rule into the traditional ACO, and names the definite characteristic of ACO as "wise select ant colony optimization (WSACO)." Because numerous job shop scheduling is common in the actual production situation, this study chooses touch panel assembly line with time window problem as the subject. This study, in the job shop production system, utilizes time window and sequence dependent setup time for constraints, and solves the problem in real world. Finally, simulated data confirm the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithm. The data test results demonstrate that WSACO has potential to replace ACO and become a significant heuristic algorithm for this kind of problem.