The NP-hard no-wait flow shop scheduling problems with makespan and total flowtime minimization are considered. Objective increment properties of the problems are analyzed. A non-dominated classification method is introduced to class population individuals into Pareto fronts to improve searching efficiency. Besides investigating the crowding distance and the elitist solution strategy, two effective bi-criteria local search procedures based on objective increments are presented to improve searching effectiveness. Based on the properties and methods, a hybrid evolutionary algorithm is proposed for the considered problems and compared with the best existing algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is effective with high efficiency.
