Flexible flow shop with sequence-dependent setup times and machine availability constraints

Abstract

This paper considers the flexible flow shop problem along with sequence-dependent setup time and machine availability constraints as two significant criteria for minimizing the total completion time with modified processing time. Not many works have been done in this field; the necessity of more researches for finding better solutions is the main motivation to implement the heuristic and meta-heuristic algorithms. So, considering both preventive maintenance (PM) and sequence-dependent setup times in production planning horizon simultaneously, which a few works have been done in this field, can strongly influence on the efficiency of manufacturing environments. Six heuristic algorithms (SMPT, LMPT, Johnson, CDS, Palmer, and MNEH) that consider modified processing time are presented. Additionally, two meta-heuristic algorithms, the variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm and the genetic algorithm (GA), are applied to solve such problems. The purpose of this survey is to evaluate the performance of the heuristic and meta-heuristic algorithms for the proposed scheduling problem. The computational result shows the efficiency of the proposed solution methods.