{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,17]],"date-time":"2025-10-17T14:20:29Z","timestamp":1760710829870,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":50,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,21]],"date-time":"2022-01-21T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1642723200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["61803149"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["61803149"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Symmetry"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In this paper, the distributed unrelated parallel machines scheduling problem (DUPMSP) is studied and a hybrid imperialist competitive algorithm (HICA) is proposed to minimize total tardiness. All empires were categorized into three types: the strongest empire, the weakest empire, and other empires; the diversified assimilation was implemented by using different search operator in the different types of empires, and a novel imperialist competition was implemented among all empires except the strongest one. The knowledge-based local search was embedded. Extensive experiments were conducted to compare the HICA with other algorithms from the literature. The computational results demonstrated that new strategies were effective and the HICA is a promising approach to solving the DUPMSP.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/sym14020204","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,23]],"date-time":"2022-01-23T20:36:27Z","timestamp":1642970187000},"page":"204","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":9,"title":["A Hybrid Imperialist Competitive Algorithm for the Distributed Unrelated Parallel Machines Scheduling Problem"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Youlian","family":"Zheng","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan 430061, China"}]},{"given":"Yue","family":"Yuan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Automation, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430062, China"}]},{"given":"Qiaoxian","family":"Zheng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan 430061, China"}]},{"given":"Deming","family":"Lei","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Automation, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430062, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,21]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"385","DOI":"10.1007\/s10601-005-2812-2","article-title":"A hybrid method for the planning and scheduling","volume":"10","author":"Hooker","year":"2005","journal-title":"Constraints"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"555","DOI":"10.1287\/opre.1060.0280","article-title":"Order assignment and scheduling in a supply chain","volume":"54","author":"Chen","year":"2006","journal-title":"Oper. 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