Flowshop scheduling problems with transportation or deterioration between the batching and single machines

Abstract

In this paper, we consider two new types of the two-machine flowshop scheduling problems where a batching machine is followed by a single machine. The first type is that normal jobs with transportation between machines are scheduled on the batching and single machines. The second type is that normal jobs are processed on the batching machine while deteriorating jobs are scheduled on the single machine. For the first type, we formulate the problem to minimize the makespan as a mixed integer programming model and prove that it is strongly NP-hard. Furthermore, a heuristic algorithm along with a worst case error bound is derived and the computational experiments are also carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed heuristic algorithm. For the second type, the two objectives are considered. For the problem with minimizing the makespan, we find an optimal polynomial algorithm. For the problem with minimizing the sum of completion time, we show that it is strongly NP-hard and propose an optimal polynomial algorithm for its special case.