A Heuristic for Group Scheduling the Multi-stage Hybrid Flow Shop Problems

According to the practical relevance, the Hybrid Flow Shop (HFS) has attracted many researchers recently. This paper addresses a special case of group scheduling problem in a multi-stage HFS with optimization of throughput related objectives. The aim of the work is to simplify the solution procedure through a heuristic approach to reach the optimal solution, i.e., minimal makespan with optimal flow parameters. The heuristic solution was tested with all possible group schedules encountered in the HFS problem to ensure the compatibility of the optimal solution and its consistency with the throughputs. The throughput related measures other than makespan such as queue status and machine utilization were considered to evaluate the performance of the heuristic. The heuristic performs well to reach the optimal solution with minimal makespan and queue status with effective machine utilization. A case study was done in a pulley manufacturing plant and a global solution was suggested.