A large number of real-world planning problems are combinatorial optimization problems which are easy to state and have a finite but usually very large number of feasible solutions. The minimum spanning tree problem and the shortest path problem are some which are solvable through polynomial algorithms. Even though there are other problems such as crew scheduling, vehicle routing, production planning, and hotel room operations which have no properties such as to solve the problem with polynomial algorithms. All these problems are NP-hard. The permutation flow shop problem is also NP-hard problem and they require high computation. These problems are solvable as in the form of the optimal and near-optimal solution. Some approach to get optimal are exhaustive search and branch and bound whereas near optimal are achieved annealing, Genetic algorithm, and other various methods.
We here have used different approach exhaustive search, branch and bound and genetic algorithm. We optimize these algorithms to get performance in time as well as get the result closer to optimal. The exhaustive search and branch and bound gives all possible optimal solutions. We here have shown the comparative result of optimal calculation for 10 jobs with varying machine number up to 20. The genetic algorithm scales up and gives results to the instances with a larger number of jobs and machines
