Impact of learning effect modelling in flowshop scheduling with makespan minimisation based on the Nawaz-Enscore-Ham algorithm

Abstract

Inspired by real-life applications, mainly in hand-intensive manufacturing, the incorporation of learning effects into scheduling problems has garnered attention in recent years. This paper deals with the flowshop scheduling problem with a learning effect, when minimising the makespan. Four approaches to model the learning effect, well-known in the literature, are considered. Mathematical models are providing for each case. A solver allows us to find the optimal solution in small problem instances, while a Simulated Annealing algorithm is proposed to deal with large problem instances. In the latter, the initial solution is obtained using the well-known Nawaz-Enscore-Ham algorithm, and two local search operators are evaluated. Computational experiments are carried out using benchmark datasets from the literature. The Simulated Annealing algorithm shows a better result for learning approaches with fast learning effects as compared to slow learning effects. Finally, for industrial decision makers, some insights about how the learning effect model might affect the makespan minimisation flowshop scheduling problem are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Scheduling
• flowshop
• learning effect
• simulated annealing
• metaheuristic

Acknowledgements

For the purpose of Open Access, a CC-BY public copyright license has been applied by the authors to the present document and will be applied to all subsequent versions up to the Author Accepted Manuscript arising from this submission.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was carried out thanks to research scholarships from Universidad de La Sabana [grants numbers INGPhD-45-2021 and INGPhD-51-2022] and from the Eiffel Excellence Scholarship PhD stream awarded to the first author by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs.

Notes on contributors

Yenny Alexandra Paredes-Astudillo

Yenny Alexandra Paredes-Astudillo is a Ph.D. student and Logistics and Supply Chain Management as part of a cotutelle agreement between INSA-Lyon, the University of Lyon, France and Univerisdad de la Sabana, Colombia. She received her master’s degree in industrial engineering from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia, in 2018. Her research interests are related to the integration of human factors engineering in scheduling and managing production.

Valérie Botta-Genoulaz

Valérie Botta-Genoulaz is currently full Professor in the Industrial Engineering Department at INSA-Lyon, Université de Lyon, France. She does her research at the DISP research lab (Decision and Information Systems for Production systems), which she created and directed from 2011 to 2020. Her research interests deal with operation planning, supply chain management, as well as enterprise information system alignment, and their impacts on sustainable performance. She is involved in many national and international research networks, conference programme committees and journal editorial board. She published about 130 papers in journals, conferences or book chapters, and co-chaired 10 books or international journal special issues and has an important expertise activity at national and international levels.

Jairo R. Montoya-Torres

Jairo R. Montoya-Torres is a Full Professor within the School of Engineering at Universidad de La Sabana, Colombia. He also acts as director of the Ph.D. programme in Engineering and PhD programme in Logistics and Supply Chain Management. He holds a Ph.D. degree from the Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne, France, and an HDR (post-doctoral diploma) from the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) Lyon and Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France. He has been invited professor or researcher at different universities in France, Spain, U.S.A. and the U.K. His research interests include supply chain management and design, sustainability in logistics and SCM, and operations scheduling using optimisation, simulation, and hybrid techniques.