Makespan minimization in machine dominated flowshop

摘要

In a flowshop scheduling problem, a set of jobs is processed by a set of machines. The jobs follow the same sequence in all machines. We study the flowshop scheduling problem under a new case of machine dominance that is often found in the manufacturing of computers and electronic devices. We provide a formula for makespan value for a given sequence, show that the makespan value depends only on certain jobs in the sequence, and present an algorithm that finds a sequence with minimum makespan. Numerical examples of the solution approaches are provided.