Research Article
A Hybrid Heuristic Algorithm for Ship Block Construction
Space Scheduling Problem
Shicheng Hu,
1
Tengjiao Liu,
1
Song Wang,
1
Yonggui Kao,
2
and Xuedong Sun
3
1
School of Economics and Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai 264209, China
2
Department of Mathematics, Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai 264209, China
3
School of Soware, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
Correspondence should be addressed to Xuedong Sun; sunxdys@.com
Received December ; Accepted January
Academic Editor: Shuenn-Ren Cheng
Copyright © Shicheng Hu et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Ship block construction space is an important bottleneck resource in the process of shipbuilding, so the production scheduling
optimization is a key technology to improve the eciency of shipbuilding. With respect to ship block construction space scheduling
problem, a hybrid heuristic algorithm is proposed in this paper. Firstly, Bottom-Le-Fill (BLF) process is introduced. Next, an initial
solution is obtained by guiding the sorting process with corners. en on the basis of the initial solution, the simulated annealing
arithmetic (SA) is used to improve the solution by oering a possibility to accept worse neighbor solutions in order to escape from
local optimum. Finally, the simulation experiments are conducted to verify the eectiveness of the algorithm.
1. Introduction
Spaceisthekeyresourceinshipblockconstructionpro-
cess. How to minimize the makespan of the project under
space resource and precedence constraints is a complicated
scheduling problem. As for this problem, two related prob-
lems are involved: resource constrained project scheduling
problem (RCPSP) and bin packing problem.
RCPSP can be described as a problem which should
be scheduled under the limits of technology and other
constraints to meet the objective of a project []. Generally,
the goal is to get the shortest project makespan under the
available resources and precedence constraints. e methods
can be classied into two categories: exact methods and
heuristic methods. Hartmann [] puts forward that RCPSP
belongs to NP-hard problem because it is always used to
extend machine scheduling problem [, ]. So with the
augment of problem scale, the computational complexity will
increase rapidly. Many researchers have used exact algorithm
to solve RCPSP [, ]; however, most of them proposed
that exact algorithm is not feasible in reality. Priority rules
proposed by Kelley [] indicated that RCPSP can be solved
by heuristic algorithms. Liu and Wang []triedtoreduce
the project makespan by heuristic algorithms and achieved
good results. Bhaskar et al. [] utilized parallel methods and
priority rules to solve RCPSP with fuzzy activity times. Lee
et al. [] proposed a ship block construction space schedul-
ing problem and described this problem theoretically. Koh
et al. [] solved the scheduling problem in shipbuilding
company by heuristic algorithm.
e bin packing problem is putting more boxes into a
limited bin in order to minimum the height. is problem can
be classied into two categories, two-dimensional and three-
dimensional problems. For the former one, researchers tend
to solve bin packing problems by heuristic methods. ey
are Bottom-Le (BL) algorithm [], Bottom-Le-Fill (BLF)
algorithm []. In addition, Belov et al. [] considered adapt-
ing one-dimensional problem for solving two-dimensional
problems. Chan et al. []triedtosolvetwo-dimensional
problems by heuristics with stochastic neighborhood struc-
tures. For three-dimensional problems, the most popular BF
[], proposed by Silvano Martello in , gure out the
problem of how to choose the most suitable cubes. Alvarez-
Valdes et al. [] used a GRASP/Path relinking algorithm to
solve multiple bin-size bin packing problems. Liao and Hsu
[] found new lower bounds to improve the eciency of
three-dimensional problems.
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society
Volume 2015, Article ID 841637, 6 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/841637