Lot-streaming for sequence dependent setup time flowshop problems*

Resumen

This paper considers an n-job m-machine lot-streaming flow shop scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times under both the idling and no-idling production cases with the objective to minimize the maximum completion time or makespan. We present a novel estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA). An estimation of probabilistic model is constructed to ensure the algorithm searching towards good regions by taking into account both job orders and similar blocks of jobs. A simple but effective local search is employed as well. A comparative evaluation is carried out and the results show that the proposed EDA is very effective in comparison. Keywords: lot-streaming, flowshop, sequence dependent setup times, scheduling