This paper proposes a hybrid variable neighborhood search (HVNS) algorithm that combines the chemical-reaction optimization (CRO) and the estimation of distribution (EDA), for solving the hybrid flow shop (HFS) scheduling problems. The objective is to minimize the maximum completion time. In the proposed algorithm, a well-designed decoding mechanism is presented to schedule jobs with more flexibility. Meanwhile, considering the problem structure, eight neighborhood structures are developed. A kinetic energy sensitive neighborhood change approach is proposed to extract global information and avoid being stuck at the local optima. In addition, contrary to the fixed neighborhood set in traditional VNS, a dynamic neighborhood set update mechanism is utilized to exploit the potential search space. Finally, for the population of local optima solutions, an effective EDA-based global search approach is investigated to direct the search process to promising regions. The proposed algorithm is tested on sets of well-known benchmark instances. Through the analysis of experimental results, the high performance of the proposed HVNS algorithm is shown in comparison with four efficient algorithms from the literature. 
A hybrid variable neighborhood search for solving the hybrid flow shop scheduling problem