Approximate Methods For Solving Flowshop Problems

The flow shop scheduling problem is a classical combinatorial problem being studied for years. The focus of this research is to study two variants of the flow shop scheduling problem in order to minimize makespan by scheduling n jobs on m machines. A solution approach is developed for the modified flow shop problem with due dates and release times. This algorithm is an attempt to contribute to the limited literature for the problem. Another tabu search-based solution approach is developed to solve the classical flow shop scheduling problem. This meta-heuristic (called 3XTS) allows an efficient search of the neighboring solutions leading to a fast solution procedure. Several control parameters affecting the quality of the algorithm are experimentally tested, and certain rules are established for different problem instances. The 3XTS is compared to another tabu search method (that seems to be a champion) in terms of solution quality and computation time