Flow shop scheduling problem with conflict graphs

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of scheduling jobs on flow shops subject to constraints given by an undirected graph, in which each edge joins a pair of conflicting jobs that cannot be processed simultaneously on different machines. We first show that the problem of minimizing the maximum completion time (makespan) is NP-hard for several versions. Then, we present polynomial-time solvable cases. On the other hand, we propose heuristic approaches and lower bounds alongside with an experimental study.