Evolving priority scheduling heuristics with genetic programming

This paper investigates the use of genetic programming in automated synthesis of scheduling heuristics for an arbitrary performance measure. Genetic programming is used to evolve the priority function, which determines the priority values of certain system elements (jobs, machines). The priority function is used within an appropriate meta-algorithm for a given environment, which forms the priority scheduling heuristic. The evolved solutions are compared with existing scheduling heuristics and found to perform similarly to or better than existing algorithms. We intend to show that this approach is particularly useful for combinations of scheduling environments and performance measures for which no adequate scheduling algorithms exist.

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► A genetic programming approach for creation of scheduling heuristics is described.
► Scheduling procedure consists of meta-algorithm and priority function.
► Application to a number of scheduling problems and a performance analysis.
► The results suggest efficiency and flexibility in various scheduling environments.