At present, a lot of references use discrete event simulation to evaluate the fitness of evolved rules, but which simulation configuration can achieve better evolutionary rules in a limited time has not been fully studied. This study proposes three types of hyper-heuristic methods for coevolution of the machine assignment rules (MAR) and job sequencing rules (JSR) to solve the DFJSP, including the cooperative coevolution genetic programming with two sub-populations (CCGP), the genetic programming with two sub-trees (TTGP) and the genetic expression programming with two sub-chromosomes (GEP). After careful parameter tuning, a surrogate simulation model is used to evaluate the fitness of evolved scheduling policies (SP). Computational simulations and comparisons demonstrate that the proposed surrogate-assisted CCGP method (CCGP-SM) shows competitive performance with other evolutionary approaches using the same computation time. Furthermore, the learning process of the proposed methods demonstrates that the surrogate-assisted GP methods help accelerating the evolutionary process and improving the quality of the evolved SPs without a significant increase in the length of SP. In addition, the evolved SPs generated by the CCGP-SM show superior performance as compared with existing rules in the literature. These results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.

Based on the non-permutation property of intercell scheduling in flowline manufacturing cells, a hybrid harmony search algorithm is proposed to solve the problem with the makespan criterion. On the basis of the basic harmony search algorithm, the three key elements of memory consideration, pitch adjustment and random selection are discretized and improved to adapt to the operation-based encoding. To compare the performance, different scale cases are generated in both the overall solution and the two-stage solution with the proposed algorithm, the hybrid particle swarm optimization algorithm and the hybrid genetic algorithm. The relative deviation is taken as the performance index. The compared results show that a better solution can be obtained with the proposed algorithm in both the overall solution and the two-stage solution, verifying the superior performance of the proposed algorithm.

Various intelligent trash cans on market at present have many drawbacks. They are complex, expensive, and have only a few functions. A new type of intelligent garbage classification box is designed, which contains four garbage classification buckets. It has the ability to automatically open or close the trash can when users pass by through infrared sensor, classify the garbage into four categories using Raspberry PI, rotate the platform on which the garbage classification buckets are based to put the garbage in place. In addition, the capacity of the garbage sorting bucket is also monitored by ultrasonic ranging sensors. When the bucket is almost full, the garbage can will compress the garbage below or set off an alarm to warn users. The intelligent garbage sorting box is of much use and possesses a high degree of automation, meeting the needs of the majority of home users. So it has a good market application prospect.