NEH-based heuristics for the distributed permutation flowshop with rejection and tardiness

Abstract

The distributed permutation flowshop scheduling problem (DPFSP) has become a research hotspot. In order to maximize total profit, two improved NEH algorithms are proposed to solve the DPFSP with rejection cost, tardiness penalty and release time. The basic NEH heuristic consists of two parts: generating initial job sequence and assigning jobs. This paper optimizes the NEH heuristic in these two parts. Two priority rules are proposed for generating initial job sequences. Two heuristics are proposed for assigning jobs according to the increment of tardiness penalty and increment of profit, respectively. In order to verify the performance of the proposed algorithms, they are compared with similar algorithms in the literature. The results validate the superiority of the proposed two prioritization rules and two heuristics.