A genetic algorithm for the open shop problem with uncertain durations

Abstract

We consider a variation of the open shop problem where task durations are allowed to be uncertain and where uncertainty is modelled using fuzzy numbers. We propose a genetic approach to minimise the expected makespan: we consider different possibilities for the genetic operators and analyse their performance, in order to obtain a competitive configuration. Finally, the performance of the proposed genetic algorithm is tested on several benchmark problems, modified so as to have fuzzy durations, compared with a greedy heuristic from the literature. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.