Distributed manufacturing scheduling problems have attracted much concern from both industrial and academic areas. Nevertheless, distributed scheduling problems with distribution operations are seldom studied. This work proposes a distributed flexible job shop scheduling problem with distribution operations. A set of jobs is handled at distributed flexible job shops, and then the finished jobs are transported to their corresponding customers following given due dates. First, a mixed integer programming model is established to minimize total tardiness. Second, an ensemble of brain storm optimization and Q-learning methods is developed to solve the formulated model. Six heuristics are hybridized to generate a high-quality initial population. A Q-learning method is devised by fully employing found search information to guide subsequent search processes instead of using fixed parameters as basic brain storm optimization. A variable neighborhood search method combining problem-specific knowledge is designed to further refine the found best individual. At last, the formulated model and method are compared with three state-of-the-art metaheuristics and a mathematical programming solver CPLEX via using a group of problem instances. The results and analysis demonstrate that the developed model and algorithm have more powerful competitiveness in addressing the studied problem.