A variable neighborhood search algorithm for solving the single machine scheduling problem with periodic maintenance

In this paper we propose to solve a single machine scheduling problem which has to undergo a periodic preventive maintenance. The objective is to minimize the weighted sum of the completion times. This criterion is defined as one of the most important objectives in practice but has not been studied so far for the considered problem. As the problem is proven to be NP-hard, and a mathematical model is proposed in the literature, we propose to use General Variable Neighborhood Search algorithm to solve this problem in order to obtain near optimal solutions for the large-sized instances in a small amount of computational time.