An Exact Method for the Best Case in a Group Sequence: Application to a General Shop Problem

Abstract: Group sequencing is a well-studied scheduling method for the job shop problem. The goal of this method is to have a sequential flexibility during the execution of the schedule and to guarantee a minimal quality corresponding to the worst case. But the best case quality of a group sequence should also be interesting. This article presents a new method to evaluate the best-case quality. This method is a branch and bound algorithm to find the optimal solution for any regular objective. Experiments show the efficiency and the limits of the exact method