Muiti-agent flow shop scheduling under ToU tariffs

Bi-objective multi-agent flow-shop scheduling problem with time-of-use electricity tariffs and customer value weightThis study investigates a novel multi-agent flow shop scheduling problem with ToU tariffs and customer value weight, in which the benefit ratio of OEM earned from each customer is represented by a customer value weight. The objective is to simultaneously optimize the weighted customer satisfaction and the total electricity cost. For the problem, a bi-objective mixed integer programming model is developed, and valid inequalities are designed to reduce the search space of the problem. For equal customer weight, an ε-constraint framework is applied to obtain Pareto front of the problem, in which a new branch and bound (B&B) algorithm is designed to exactly solve a series of transformed single-objective problems. For the general problem, a multi-objective bacterial foraging optimization (MO_BFO) algorithm is developed to obtain the approximate Pareto front. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithms.