A study on integrating sequence dependent setup time flexible flow lines and preventive maintenance scheduling

This paper investigates flexible flow line problems with sequence dependent setup times and different preventive maintenance policies. The optimization criterion is the minimization of makespan. The contribution of this work could be divided into two parts: (1) Since the proposed integrating methods in the literature are often not only complicated but also problem-specific, we have been thinking of providing a technique simple to implement, yet easily extendible to any other machine scheduling problems to overcome the foregoing drawbacks. (2) In order to tackle the problem, we propose a novel variable neighborhood search (VNS) as well as the adaptations of some existing high performing metaheuristics in the literature. The proposed VNS uses advanced neighborhood search structures. In order to evaluate the algorithms, a benchmark is established with the meticulous care. All the results illustrate that the VNS outperforms the other algorithms.