Abstract
Job evaluation and differentiation are crucial in scheduling. Since jobs can be represented by vectors of processing times, the average, standard deviation, and skewness of job processing times can be defined as the moments of their probability distribution. The first and the second moments of processing times are effective in sorting jobs (Dong et al., 2008), however they are not yet optimized to characterize and differentiate distributions of similar jobs. In this paper, skewness is utilized for the first time to construct a new priority rule, which is applied to the Nawaz-Enscore-Ham (NEH) heuristic (Nawaz et al., 1983), for solving scheduling problems in permutation flowshops. A novel tie-breaking rule is also developed by minimizing partial system idle time without increasing computational complexity of the NEH heuristic, in order to further improve the heuristic performance. Computational results show that the new heuristic outperforms the best NEH-based heuristics reported in the literature in terms of solution quality.
Highlights
In scheduling, job differentiation and sequencing have direct impacts on heuristic performance
Many successful scheduling rules and algorithms have been developed based on job sequencing, such as Shortest Processing Time rule (SPT), First Come First Serve rule (FCFS), Longest Processing Time rule (LPT), Page algorithm (Page, 1961), Palmer algorithm (Palmer, 1965), NEH heuristic (Nawaz et al, 1983), etc
This paper focuses on the permutation flowshop scheduling problem (PFSP), which is commonly encountered in automotive manufacturing (Xu and Zhou, 2009), IC (Integrated Circuit) fabrication (Liu and Chang, 2000), photographic film production (Aghezzaf and Van Landeghem, 2002), pharmaceutical and agro-food industries (Boukef et al, 2007)
Summary
A New Improved NEH Heuristic for Permutation Flowshop Scheduling Problems. International Journal of Production Economics, 193, 21-30. Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal. International Journal of Production Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe
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