Title: A simulated annealing approach to minimise makespan in a hybrid flowshop with a batch processing machine

Authors: Santha Raja Kumari Upadhyayula; Shanthi Muthuswamy; Purushothaman Damodaran

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, Il – 60115, USA ' Department of Engineering Technology, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, Il – 60115, USA ' Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, Il – 60115, USA

Abstract: A two-stage hybrid flowshop with a batch processing machine (BPM) in stage 1 and a set of discrete processing machines in stage 2 is considered in this research. Job sizes and their processing times are given. The BPM can process multiple jobs simultaneously as long as the total size of all jobs does not exceed its capacity, and the processing time is dictated by the longest processing job in the batch. In stage 2, the jobs have to be processed one at a time. The objective is to minimise the makespan. As the problem under study is NP-hard, a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm was designed. A mathematical formulation was also developed and a commercial solver was used to solve the problem instances. An experimental study was conducted to compare SA with the solver. The study highlights the efficiency of SA in solving larger problem instances with good quality solution in shorter computational time.

Keywords: batch processing machines; BPMs; scheduling; hybrid flowshop; simulated annealing; makespan; heuristics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2022.122825

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2022 Vol.40 No.4, pp.513 - 532

Received: 27 Apr 2020
Accepted: 06 Jun 2020
Published online: 13 May 2022 *

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