Reducing mean flow time in permutation flow shop

Abstract

This paper deals with the traditional permutation flow shop scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing mean flowtime, therefore reducing in-process inventory. A new heuristic method is proposed for the scheduling problem solution. The proposed heuristic is compared with the best one considered in the literature. Experimental results show that the new heuristic provides better solutions regarding both the solution quality and computational effort.

Keywords:

• scheduling
• heuristic algorithm
• flow shop
• mean flowtime

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the referees for their valuable comments on this paper. The research reported in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico—CNPq, Brasil.