HEURISTIC ALGORITHM FOR FLOWSHOP SCHEDULING PROBLEM

This paper describes a simple heuristic algorithm for seeking a quick and approximate solution to the n-job, M-machine flowshop scheduling problem under the assumptions that the process times of the jobs are deterministic and the same order of jobs is followed on all machines. The proposed algorithm is based on the fact that the flowshop scheduling problem may be considered as (M minus 1) quasiequivalent sorting problems and that an approximate solution to the flowshop scheduling problem may be obtained by solving the corresponding sorting problems. The proposed heuristic algorithm can be executed manually for reasonably large-sized problems and yields solutions that are comparatively closer to optimal solutions than those obtained by the Campbell-Dudek-Smith heuristic algorithm. These computational results are discussed and efficiency of the proposed heuristic is compared with that of the Campbell-Dudek-Smith algorithm.