Minimizing Rental Cost under Specified Rental Policy in Two Stage Flow Shop, the Processing Time Associated with Probabilities Including Break-down Interval and Job – Block Criteria

In real world scheduling applications, machines might not be available during certain time periods due to deterministic or stochastic causes. This paper is an attempt to study the two machine general flow shop problem in which the processing time of the jobs are associated with probabilities, following some restrictive renting policy including break-down interval and equivalent job-block criteria. The objective of the paper is to find an algorithm to minimize the rental cost of the machines under specified rental policy with break-down interval and job block criteria. The proposed method is very simple and easy to understand and also, provide an important tool for decision makers. The method is justified with the help of numerical example and a computer program