Minimizing Cycle Time in a Blocking Flowshop

I.N. Kamal Abadi, Nicholas G. Hall () and Chelliah Sriskandarajah ()
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I.N. Kamal Abadi: Faculty of Engineering, University of Kordestan, Sanandaj, Islamic Republic of Iran
Nicholas G. Hall: Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, 2100 Neil Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43210
Chelliah Sriskandarajah: School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas, 2601 N. Floyd Road, Richardson, Texas 75083-0688

Operations Research, 2000, vol. 48, issue 1, 177-180

Abstract: We consider a blocking (i.e., bufferless) flowshop that repetitively processes a minimal part set to minimize its cycle time, or equivalently to maximize its throughput rate. The best previous heuristic procedure solves instances with 9 machines and 25 jobs, with relative errors averaging about 3% but sometimes as much as 10%. The idea of deliberately slowing down the processing of operations (i.e., increasing their processing times) establishes a precise mathematical connection between this problem and a no-wait flowshop. This enables a very effective heuristic for the no-wait flowshop to be adapted as a heuristic for the blocking flowshop. Our computational results show relative errors that average less than 2% for instances with 20 machines and 250 jobs.

Keywords: Production/scheduling: sequencing; blocking flowshop; Manufacturing: Traveling salesman problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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