Title: Optimisation of sequencing and scheduling in hybrid flow shop environment using heuristic approach

Authors: S. Sridhar, T. Prabaharan, M. Saravanan

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, PSNA College of Engineering and Technology, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mepco Engineering College, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, 624 005, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, RVS College of Engineering and Technology, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: This paper considers the hybrid flow shop scheduling problem. Most real world scheduling problems are NP-hard in nature. The main purpose of this paper is to present a new approach to the objective version of the well known hybrid flow shop problem. The processing of each job on each machine is an operation which requires the exclusive use of the machine for an uninterrupted duration called the processing time |t|. The objective of this paper is to find minimum makespan in a serial multiple-stage manufacturing system, where each stage consists of parallel identical machines. Generally processing of |n| jobs by |m| machines with |k| stage is solved by Gantt chart method which gives an active feasible schedule. A simulated annealing algorithm is proposed in this paper to find a better/optimal or near optimal schedule. This technique reveals that the proposed algorithm is capable of providing better results than the company existing production results.

Keywords: hybrid flow shops; makespan; heuristic approaches; simulated annealing algorithms; scheduling; optimisation; sequencing; NP-hard; non-deterministic polynomial-time; job processing; machine operations; exclusive usage; uninterrupted duration; processing times; serial multiple-stage systems; manufacturing systems; identical machines; parallel machines; Gantt charts; feasible schedules; optimal schedules; production results; logistics; economics; globalisation; operational excellence; business excellence.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLEG.2010.037520

International Journal of Logistics Economics and Globalisation, 2010 Vol.2 No.4, pp.331 - 351

Published online: 15 Dec 2010 *

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