1. Applying the Clonal Selection Principle to Find Flexible Job-Shop Schedules.
- Author
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Jacob, Christian, Pilat, Marcin L., Bentley, Peter J., Timmis, Jonathan, Ong, Z.X., Tay, J.C., and Kwoh, C.K.
- Abstract
We apply the Clonal Selection principle of the human immune system to solve the Flexible Job-Shop Problem with recirculation. Various practical design issues are addressed in the implemented algorithm, ClonaFLEX; first, an efficient antibody representation which creates only feasible solutions and a bootstrapping antibody initialization method to reduce the search time required. Second, the assignment of suitable mutation rates for antibodies based on their affinity. To this end, a simple yet effective visual method of determining the optimal mutation value is proposed. And third, to prevent premature convergence, a novel way of using elite pools to incubate antibodies is presented. Performance results of ClonaFLEX are obtained against benchmark FJSP instances by Kacem and Brandimarte. On average, ClonaFLEX outperforms a cultural evolutionary algorithm (EA) in 7 out of 12 problem sets, equivalent results for 4 and poorer in 1. Keywords: Immune Algorithm, Clonal Selection, Flexible Job-Shop Scheduling Problem, Optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
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