Evaluating the performance of constructive heuristics for the blocking flow shop scheduling problem with setup times

Abstract

This paper addresses the minimization of makespan for the permutation flow shop scheduling problem with blocking and sequence and machine dependent setup times, a problem not yet studied in previous studies. The 14 best known heuristics for the permutation flow shop problem with blocking and no setup times are presented and then adapted to the problem in two different ways; resulting in 28 different heuristics. The heuristics are then compared using the Taillard database. As there is no other work that addresses the problem with blocking and sequence and machine dependent setup times, a database for the setup times was created. The setup time value was uniformly distributed between 1% and 10%, 50%, 100% and 125% of the processing time value. Computational tests are then presented for each of the 28 heuristics, comparing the mean relative deviation of the makespan, the computational time and the percentage of successes of each method. Results show that the heuristics were capable of providing interesting results.

Solving the permutation flow shop problem with blocking and setup time constraints

“…Furthermore, 900 problems were generated to evaluate the proposed methods, varying setup times, buffer sizes and number of jobs and machines. Takano and Nagano (2019) evaluated 28 different heuristics for the zero buffer with sequence dependent setup times problem. The objective function considered was the minimization of the makespan.…”