Heuristics for the distributed blocking Ffow shop scheduling problem

Postprint (published version

A computational evaluation of constructive and improvement heuristics for the blocking flow shop to minimize total flowtime

This paper focuses on the blocking flow shop scheduling problem with the objective of total flowtime minimisation. This problem assumes that there are no buffers between machines and, due to its application to many manufacturing sectors, it is receiving a growing attention by researchers during the last years. Since the problem is NP-hard, a large number of heuristics have been proposed to provide good solutions with reasonable computational times. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the available heuristics for the problem and for related problems, resulting in the implementation and testing of a total of 35 heuristics. Furthermore, we propose an efficient constructive heuristic which successfully combines a pool of partial sequences in parallel, using a beam-search-based approach. The computational experiments show the excellent performance of the proposed heuristic as compared to the best-so-far algorithms for the problem, both in terms of quality of the solutions and of computational requirements. In fact, despite being a relative fast constructive heuristic, new best upper bounds have been found for more than 27% of Taillard’s instances.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2013-44461-P/DP

Lot Streaming in Different Types of Production Processes: A PRISMA Systematic Review

At present, any industry that wanted to be considered a vanguard must be willing to improve itself, developing innovative techniques to generate a competitive advantage against its direct competitors. Hence, many methods are employed to optimize production processes, such as Lot Streaming, which consists of partitioning the productive lots into overlapping small batches to reduce the overall operating times known as Makespan, reducing the delivery time to the final customer. This work proposes carrying out a systematic review following the PRISMA methodology to the existing literature in indexed databases that demonstrates the application of Lot Streaming in the different production systems, giving the scientific community a strong consultation tool, useful to validate the different important elements in the definition of the Makespan reduction objectives and their applicability in the industry. Two hundred papers were identified on the subject of this study. After applying a group of eligibility criteria, 63 articles were analyzed, concluding that Lot Streaming can be applied in different types of industrial processes, always keeping the main objective of reducing Makespan, becoming an excellent improvement tool, thanks to the use of different optimization algorithms, attached to the reality of each industry.This work was supported by the Universidad Tecnica de Ambato (UTA) and their Research and Development Department (DIDE) under project CONIN-P-256-2019, and SENESCYT by grants “Convocatoria Abierta 2011” and “Convocatoria Abierta 2013”

Efficiency of the solution representations for the hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with makespan objective

In this paper we address the classical hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with makespan objective. As this problem is known to be NP-hard and a very common layout in real-life manufacturing scenarios, many studies have been proposed in the literature to solve it. These contributions use different solution representations of the feasible schedules, each one with its own advantages and disadvantages. Some of them do not guarantee that all feasible semiactive schedules are represented in the space of solutions –thus limiting in principle their effectiveness– but, on the other hand, these simpler solution representations possess clear advantages in terms of having consistent neighbourhoods with well-defined neighbourhood moves. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the solution space reduction and the ability to conduct an efficient search in this reduced solution space. This trade-off is determined by two aspects, i.e. the extent of the solution space reduction, and the quality of the schedules left aside by this solution space reduction. In this paper, we analyse the efficiency of the different solution representations employed in the literature for the problem. More specifically, we first establish the size of the space of semiactive schedules achieved by the different solution representations and, secondly, we address the issue of the quality of the schedules that can be achieved by these representations using the optimal solutions given by several MILP models and complete enumeration. The results obtained may contribute to design more efficient algorithms for the hybrid flow shop scheduling problem.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2016-80750-

Efficient heuristics for the parallel blocking flow shop scheduling problem

We consider the NP-hard problem of scheduling n jobs in F identical parallel flow shops, each consisting of a series of m machines, and doing so with a blocking constraint. The applied criterion is to minimize the makespan, i.e., the maximum completion time of all the jobs in F flow shops (lines). The Parallel Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (PFSP) is conceptually similar to another problem known in the literature as the Distributed Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (DPFSP), which allows modeling the scheduling process in companies with more than one factory, each factory with a flow shop configuration. Therefore, the proposed methods can solve the scheduling problem under the blocking constraint in both situations, which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been studied previously. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model along with some constructive and improvement heuristics to solve the parallel blocking flow shop problem (PBFSP) and thus minimize the maximum completion time among lines. The proposed constructive procedures use two approaches that are totally different from those proposed in the literature. These methods are used as initial solution procedures of an iterated local search (ILS) and an iterated greedy algorithm (IGA), both of which are combined with a variable neighborhood search (VNS). The proposed constructive procedure and the improved methods take into account the characteristics of the problem. The computational evaluation demonstrates that both of them –especially the IGA– perform considerably better than those algorithms adapted from the DPFSP literature.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Математическое моделирование процессов выполнения пакетов заданий в конвейерных системах с промежуточными буферами ограниченных размеров

Modern methods of process planning in conveyor systems with buffers of a certain size between processing devices allow optimizing schedules for single tasks or fixed task packages with a limited number of them and a limited number of devices. The use of mathematical models of the processes of performing single tasks (task packages) used by these methods in optimizing the composition of packages and schedules for their execution in systems with an arbitrary number of packages and devices is impossible. At the same time, mathematical models of the processes of executing task packages in conveyor systems in the presence of buffers of limited sizes between devices are the basis for the development of methods for optimizing their (package) compositions and schedules for the implementation of actions with them on the devices of conveyor systems. In this regard, the article develops mathematical models of multi-stage processes of performing an arbitrary number of task packages in conveyor systems in the presence of intermediate buffers of limited sizes for two and three devices, as well as for an arbitrary number of devices. The use of these models makes it possible to determine the time points of the start of the execution of task packages on the devices of conveyor systems, taking into account the limited size of intermediate buffers, as well as the duration of time intervals for the use of these resources and the efficiency of their use over time. An algorithm has also been developed for mathematical modeling of the processes of executing task packages in conveyor systems in the presence of intermediate buffers of limited size, which calculates the time characteristics of these processes based on a given order of implementation of actions with task packages on the devices of conveyor systems. An application has been developed that implements synthesized mathematical models of the processes of executing task packages in conveyor systems with intermediate buffers of limited sizes and an appropriate method for modeling these processes. Versatile testing of the developed application has shown that the obtained mathematical models and the modeling method adequately describe the course of multi-stage processes of task packages in pipeline systems, set using different values of their (processes) parameters.Современные методы планирования процессов в конвейерных системах с буферами определенного размера между обрабатывающими приборами позволяют оптимизировать расписания выполнения единичных заданий либо фиксированных пакетов заданий при их ограниченном количестве и ограниченном количестве приборов. Применение математических моделей процессов выполнения единичных заданий (пакетов заданий), используемых этими методами, при оптимизации составов пакетов и расписаний их выполнения в системах с произвольным количеством пакетов и приборов является невозможным. В то же время математические модели процессов выполнения пакетов заданий в конвейерных системах при наличии буферов ограниченных размеров между приборами являются основой для разработки методов оптимизации их (пакетов) составов и расписаний реализации действий с ними на приборах конвейерных систем. В связи с этим в статье разработаны математические модели многостадийных процессов выполнения произвольного количества пакетов заданий в конвейерных системах при наличии промежуточных буферов ограниченных размеров для двух и трех приборов, а также для произвольного количества приборов. Использование этих моделей позволяет определять моменты времени начала выполнения пакетов заданий на приборах конвейерных систем с учетом ограниченных размеров промежуточных буферов, а также длительности интервалов времени использования этих ресурсов и эффективность их использования в течение времени. Также разработан алгоритм математического моделирования процессов выполнения пакетов заданий в конвейерных системах при наличии промежуточных буферов ограниченных размеров, осуществляющий на основе заданного порядка реализации действий с пакетами заданий на приборах конвейерных систем вычисление временных характеристик этих процессов. Осуществлена разработка приложения, реализующего синтезированные математические модели процессов выполнения пакетов заданий в конвейерных системах с промежуточными буферами ограниченных размеров и соответствующий метод моделирования этих процессов. Разностороннее тестирование разработанного приложения показало, что полученные математические модели и метод моделирования адекватно описывают ход многостадийных процессов выполнения пакетов заданий в конвейерных системах, задаваемый с использованием различных значений их (процессов) параметров

Genetic algorithm integrated with artificial chromosomes for multi-objective flowshop scheduling problems

a b s t r a c t Recently, a wealthy of research works has been dedicated to the design of effective and efficient genetic algorithms in dealing with multi-objective scheduling problems. In this paper, an artificial chromosome generating mechanism is designed to reserve patterns of genes in elite chromosomes and to find possible better solutions. The artificial chromosome generating mechanism is embedded in simple genetic algorithm (SGA) and the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) to solve single-objective and multiobjective flowshop-scheduling problems, respectively. The single-objective problems are to minimize the makespan while the multi-objective scheduling problems are to minimize the makespan and the maximum tardiness. Extensive numerical studies are conducted and the results indicate that artificial chromosomes embedded with SGA and NSGAII are able to further speed up the convergence of the genetic algorithm and improve the solution quality. This promising result may be of interests to industrial practitioners and academic researchers in the field of evolutionary algorithm or machine scheduling

Multicriteria hybrid flow shop scheduling problem: literature review, analysis, and future research

This research focuses on the Hybrid Flow Shop production scheduling problem, which is one of the most difficult problems to solve. The literature points to several studies that focus the Hybrid Flow Shop scheduling problem with monocriteria functions. Despite of the fact that, many real world problems involve several objective functions, they can often compete and conflict, leading researchers to concentrate direct their efforts on the development of methods that take consider this variant into consideration. The goal of the study is to review and analyze the methods in order to solve the Hybrid Flow Shop production scheduling problem with multicriteria functions in the literature. The analyses were performed using several papers that have been published over the years, also the parallel machines types, the approach used to develop solution methods, the type of method develop, the objective function, the performance criterion adopted, and the additional constraints considered. The results of the reviewing and analysis of 46 papers showed opportunities for future researchon this topic, including the following: (i) use uniform and dedicated parallel machines, (ii) use exact and metaheuristics approaches, (iv) develop lower and uppers bounds, relations of dominance and different search strategiesto improve the computational time of the exact methods,  (v) develop  other types of metaheuristic, (vi) work with anticipatory setups, and (vii) add constraints faced by the production systems itself

Energy Efficient Manufacturing Scheduling: A Systematic Literature Review

The social context in relation to energy policies, energy supply, and sustainability concerns as well as advances in more energy-efficient technologies is driving a need for a change in the manufacturing sector. The main purpose of this work is to provide a research framework for energy-efficient scheduling (EES) which is a very active research area with more than 500 papers published in the last 10 years. The reason for this interest is mostly due to the economic and environmental impact of considering energy in production scheduling. In this paper, we present a systematic literature review of recent papers in this area, provide a classification of the problems studied, and present an overview of the main aspects and methodologies considered as well as open research challenges