3-Stage Specially Structured Flow Shop Scheduling to Minimize the Rental Cost Including Transportation Time, Job Weightage and Job Block Criteria

This article describe the development of a new heuristic algorithm which guarantees an optimal solution for specially structured flow shop scheduling problem with n-jobs,3- machines, to minimize the rental cost under specified rental policy with transportation time, job weightage and job block criteria. Further the processing times are not merely random but bear a well defined relationship to one another. Most of literature emphasized on minimization of idle time/ make span. But minimization of make span may not always lead to minimize rental cost of machines. Objective of this work is to minimize the rental cost of machines under a specified rental policy irrespective of make span. Keywords: rental policy, Job weightage, job block, transportation time, utilization time