Improvements for multi-objective flow shop scheduling by Pareto Iterated Local Search

Abstract: The article describes the proposition and application of a local search metaheuristic for multi-objective optimization problems. It is based on two main principles of heuristic search, intensification through variable neighborhoods, and diversification through perturbations and successive iterations in favorable regions of the search space. The concept is successfully tested on permutation flow shop scheduling problems under multiple objectives and compared to other local search approaches. While the obtained results are encouraging in terms of their quality, another positive attribute of the approach is its simplicity as it does require the setting of only very few parameters.