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No-wait flow shop scheduling with large lot sizes

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Abstract

NO-WAIT FLOW SHOP consists of minimizing the completion time of a set of N parts that must undergo a series of m machines in the same order, with the constraint that each part, once started, cannot wait on or between the machines. The problem is known to be NP-complete for m ≥ 3, while an O(N log N) algorithm exists when m = 2. In this paper, some new results are presented concerning the case in which parts are grouped into lots of identical parts. An ε-approximate algorithm is proposed, based on the solution to a trans-portation problem. The relative error of the approximation goes to zero as the size of any lot grows. Experimental results are reported comparing our approach with the only other ε-approximate algorithm known in literature.

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Authors
  1. Alessandro Agnetis
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Agnetis, A. No-wait flow shop scheduling with large lot sizes. Annals of Operations Research 70, 415–438 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018942709213

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