A State Transition Diagram and an Artificial Physarum polycephalum Colony Algorithm for the Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problem with Transportation Constraints
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper suggests a model for the flexible job shop scheduling problem with transportation constraints where the job shop scheduling problem and the transportation scheduling problem are integrated by mixed integer linear programming resulting in minimization of the makespan, the average processing waiting time and the average transportation waiting time.
The paper is nice and I enjoyed reading it; however, I have several concerns:
1. Maximum operation number of job j should be denoted by O_jmax. i has nothing to do with this definition.
2. In section 3, 15 (!) equations are written one after the other with almost no explanation. This makes the equations very difficult to understand.
3. In figure 3, there are 3 options to go from the rectangle "The expansion operation of APPC". How does the algorithm decide which direction to go?
4. In equation 17, the authors use Sigma of m,i,and j. What is i? An explanation is needed.
5. In algorithm 1, ":" represents several things. If the authors want to write a range, it would be better to use "-" or "to" e.g. 1-S or 1 to S.
6. In algorithm 2, eth should be replaced by e_th.
7. The equations and the results seem to be detached. Please explain how you have designed the experiments based on the theoretical background.
8. In table 5, an explanation is required why case 2 has much more errors - about 2 times more errors than case 1.
9. The authors write "every vehicle can only carry a job at a time". In Carrino, F., Vaucher, Q., Pasquier, R., Bourquin, V., Abou Khaled, O., Mugellini, E., & Gobron, S., "Bombuscar: gamification design of a carpolling-based freight transport", In Proceedings of GSGS'20: 5th Gamification & Serious Game Symposium, Switzerland, 2020., the authors suggest carpooling for freight transportation. Also, in Wiseman, Y., "Intelligent transportation systems along with the covid-19 pandemic will significantly change the transportation market", The Open Transportation Journal, 15(1), 2021, available online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20210814224740id_/https://opentransportationjournal.com/contents/volumes/V15/TOTJ-15-11/TOTJ-15-11.pdf , the author suggests platooning of autonomous vehicles that can lead for a better throughput. I would encourage the authors to cite these papers and explain at least as a future work how they can enhance their work by using carpooling and platooning.
Author Response
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Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper seems fine, I have some minor comments:
The Section 3.1 with the symbols should be moved to end of the paper.
By Figure 4 the first line "Algorithm 1: Expansion operation" is not clear for me, whether it is the title of algorithm or a separete sub-algorithm? If the latter, please detail it. It is true for Figure 5. Oher thing, that the algorithm described in Figure seems strange, I am not sure whether the name Figure is correct.
By the Figure 6 and 7 the characters are smaller than the normal text. Please modify it.
Author Response
The entire text has been carefully revised. Please refer to the attachment for details.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Name of the paper: An Artificial Physarum Polycephalum Colony Algorithm for the Flexible Job Shop cheduling Problem with Transportation Constraints.
This paper addresses the flexible job shop scheduling problem with transportation constraints, which is more challenging than most job scheduling problems. The problem involves two sub problems, i.e., machine scheduling problem and vehicle scheduling problem.
The study's strength lies in its interesting and well-designed approach to tackling an important problem in job shop scheduling problems. The example (case study) is very well-explained and the comparative analysis is concise and comprehensive. Superiority of proposed method with APPC, GA, PSO, ACO, DL, ABC.
Minor Comments
- Abstract is too long. Please revise
- Please check the format of the citatation style
- In the last paragraph of the literature review, please add the resesearch gap
Minor editing of English language required
Author Response
The entire text has been carefully revised. Please refer to the attachment for details.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
This paper proposes a novel artificial Physarum polycephalum colony algorithm for job shop scheduling. It models the flexible job shop scheduling problem with transportation constraints as a state transition diagram and a multi-objective function. Next, based on the swarm intelligence of natural Physarum polycephalum, it presents a novel artificial Physarum polycephalum colony. Experiments have been performed to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm.
However, the paper suffers from the following problems:
1. The motivation is not clear. It is better to provide an example (with a figure) to demonstrate the necessity of proposing the algorithm.
2. Section introduces an objective function and constraints but lacks the basic ideas of them.
3. Although some experiments have been done, it has been performed on numerical data. It is better to use real-world data to validate the performance of the proposed method.
4. The proposed algorithm also needs to experimentally compare with existing solutions.
5. The presentation needs to be improved.
6. The paper lacks investigation of related works, such as:
[1] Proc. VLDB Endow. 13(7): 1050-1063 (2020)
[2] ICDE 2022: 2399-2411
[3] arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.00796
Can be improved
Author Response
The entire text has been carefully revised. Please refer to the attachment for details.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors made a decent effort and the paper is certainly publishable so I would recommend accepting the paper.
Reviewer 4 Report
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