Using Ant Colony Algorithm to solve NP-Complete problems

Abstract

We consider the problem of scheduling jobs on a single machine about a common due
date. Our objective is to determine the common due date and processing sequence of new jobs
together with the re-sequencing of old jobs which minimize the sum of jobs’
earliness/tardiness, completion time penalties and due date related penalty. We drive
properties that can be used to find the optimal common due date and processing sequence.
Since our problem is NP-hard, we propose Ant colony algorithm (ACO) to solve the problem
efficiently. Results from computational study reveal that Ant colony algorithm (ACO) can