A modified rapid access heuristic for flowshop scheduling problem Online publication date: Tue, 30-Sep-2014
by Ning Wang, Reinaldo J. Moraga, Omar Ghrayeb
International Journal of Applied Management Science (IJAMS), Vol. 3, No. 4, 2011
Abstract: This paper presents a modified rapid access (MRA) heuristic to solve the flowshop scheduling problems. This new heuristic follows the fundamental idea of the original rapid access approach by forming a two-machine subproblem, but the processing times are determined by using an exponential weighting modifier for the original linear weighting scheme without additional computational effort, then the subproblem is solved by using Johnson's two-machine algorithm. The performance of MRA is tested using instances from the literature and compared with the performance of the original rapid access (RA). Results show that the MRA outperforms the original RA in large size problems by using specific value of parameter alpha. Factorial experiment and response surface methodology are applied to determine the best alpha value which is the main factor that impacts the performance of MRA and produce the best performance of the MRA heuristic.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Applied Management Science (IJAMS):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook