A Bio-Inspired and Heuristic-Based Hybrid Algorithm for Effective Performance With Load Balancing in Cloud Environment

In a cloud computing environment, effective scheduling policies and load balancing have always been the aim. An efficient task scheduler must be proficient in a dynamically distributed environment and to the policy of efficient scheduling of jobs based upon the workload. In this research, a novel hybrid heuristic algorithm is developed for balancing the load among cloud nodes. This is achieved by hybridizing the existing ant colony optimization (ACO), artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC), and AHP (analytical hierarchy process) algorithm. The AHP algorithm and the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is used for figuring out the best servers suitable for a particular job, and the ant colony algorithm is used to find the most efficient path to that particular server. The proposed algorithm is better in resource utilization. It also performs better load balancing, which keeps on improving with time. The result analysis shows better average response time and better average makespan time compared to other two existing algorithms.

Improved Hybrid Heuristic Algorithm Inspired by Tissue-Like Membrane System to Solve Job Shop Scheduling Problem

In real industrial engineering, job shop scheduling problem (JSSP) is considered to be one of the most difficult and tricky non-deterministic polynomial-time (NP)-hard problems. This study proposes a new hybrid heuristic algorithm for solving JSSP inspired by the tissue-like membrane system. The framework of the proposed algorithm incorporates improved genetic algorithms (GA), modified rumor particle swarm optimization (PSO), and fine-grained local search methods (LSM). To effectively alleviate the premature convergence of GA, the improved GA uses adaptive crossover and mutation probabilities. Taking into account the improvement of the diversity of the population, the rumor PSO is discretized to interactively optimize the population. In addition, a local search operator incorporating critical path recognition is designed to enhance the local search ability of the population. Experiment with 24 benchmark instances show that the proposed algorithm outperforms other latest comparative algorithms, and hybrid optimization strategies that complement each other in performance can better break through the original limitations of the single meta-heuristic method.

Allocation and Scheduling of Handling Resources in the Railway Container Terminal Based on Crossing Crane Area

The integrated allocation and scheduling of handling resources are crucial problems in the railway container terminal (RCT). We investigate the integrated optimization problem for handling resources of the crane area, dual-gantry crane (GC), and internal trucks (ITs). A creative handling scheme is proposed to reduce the long-distance, full-loaded movement of GCs by making use of the advantages of ITs. Based on this scheme, we propose a flexible crossing crane area to balance the workload of dual-GC. Decomposing the integrated problem into four sub-problems, a multi-objective mixed-integer programming model (MIP) is developed. By analyzing the characteristic of the integrated problem, a three-layer hybrid heuristic algorithm (TLHHA) incorporating heuristic rule (HR), elite co-evolution genetic algorithm (ECEGA), greedy rule (GR), and simulated annealing (SA) is designed for solving the problem. Numerical experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm. The results show that the proposed algorithm has excellent searching ability, and the simultaneous optimization scheme could ensure the requirements for efficiency, effectiveness, and energy-saving, as well as the balance rate of dual-GC.