On Optimal Permutation Scheduling in Stochastic Proportionate Flowshops

Abstract

Consider m machines in series with unlimited intermediate buffers and n jobs available at time zero. The processing times of job j on all m machines are equal to a random variable Xj with distribution Fj. Various cost functions are analyzed using stochastic order relationships. First, we focus on minimizing where cj is the weight (holding cost) and Tj the completion time of job j. We establish that if are in a class of distributions we define as SIFR, and and are increasing sequences of likelihood ratio-ordered and stochastic-ordered random variables, respectively, the job sequence [1, 2, … n ] is optimal among all static permutation schedules. Second, for arbitrary processing time distributions, if is an increasing sequence of likelihood ratio-ordered (hazard rate-ordered) random variables and the costs are nonincreasing, then a general cost function is minimized by the job sequence [1,2,…, n] in the stochastic ordering (increasing convex ordering) sense.