Permutation and non-permutation schedules for the flowline manufacturing cell with sequence dependent family setups

Abstract

Through the use of an effective simulated annealing algorithm, this paper presents an extensive computational investigation concerning the performance evaluation of non-permutation vs. permutation schedules for the flowline manufacturing cell with sequence dependent setup times. The results show that there are significant improvements made by using non-permutation schedules over permutation schedules regarding completion-time based and due-date based criteria. It is suggested that practitioners could adopt non-permutation schedules to improve their operational efficiency within a reasonable amount of computational effort.