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A Water Flow Algorithm for Flexible Flow Shop Scheduling with Intermediate Buffers

Tran, Trung Hieu, Ng, Kein Ming (2011) A Water Flow Algorithm for Flexible Flow Shop Scheduling with Intermediate Buffers. Journal of Scheduling, 14 (5). pp. 483-500. ISSN 1094-6136. (doi:10.1007/s10951-010-0205-x) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:33912)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10951-010-0205-x

Abstract

We investigate the flexible flow shop scheduling problem with limited or unlimited intermediate buffers. A common objective of the problem is to find a production schedule that minimizes the completion time of jobs. Other objectives that we also consider are minimizing the total weighted flow time of jobs and minimizing the total weighted tardiness time of jobs. We propose a water-flow algorithm to solve this scheduling problem. The algorithm is inspired by the hydrological cycle in meteorology and the erosion phenomenon in nature. In the algorithm, we combine the amount of precipitation and its falling force to form a flexible erosion capability. This helps the erosion process of the algorithm to focus on exploiting promising regions strongly. To initiate the algorithm, we use a constructive procedure to obtain a seed permutation. We also use an improvement procedure for constructing a complete schedule from a permutation that represents the sequence of jobs in the first stage of the scheduling problem. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, we use benchmark instances taken from the literature and randomly generated instances of the scheduling problem. The computational results demonstrate the efficacy of the algorithm. We have also obtained several improved solutions for the benchmark instances using the proposed algorithm. We further illustrate the algorithm’s capability for solving problems in practical applications by applying it to a maltose syrup production problem.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1007/s10951-010-0205-x
Uncontrolled keywords: Flexible flow shop scheduling; Intermediate buffers; Metaheuristic; Water-flow algorithm
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HA Statistics > HA33 Management Science
Divisions: Divisions > Kent Business School - Division > Kent Business School (do not use)
Depositing User: Catherine Norman
Date Deposited: 16 May 2013 11:54 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:11 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/33912 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Tran, Trung Hieu.

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