Analyzing the Makespan using Processing Time Splitting Technique in Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling Problems

In the shop floor, the production target is always a challenging job for any planning engineer. Meeting the due date is critical for the financial claims and marketing purposes. While scheduling, sometimes two or more operations are combined for processing and considered as a single job. Similarly, one machine may be overloaded with longer processing times. Some may be intentional, whereas, some may be unknowingly done. Clear definition of the processes and the corresponding spans before scheduling the jobs is highly significant for the speedy completion of all the jobs. In this paper, both the situations are analyzed with a numerical example. The effects of splitting the processing times and introducing an additional similar machine in the production line are studied for a permutation flow shop scheduling problem.