A note on scheduling hybrid flow systems

This note demonstrates the equivalency of the ‘shortest processing time’ (SPT) and the ‘minimum deviation’ (MD) scheduling rules in the hybrid flow shop presented by Narasimhan and Mangiameli under their particular assumption of processing times. To accomplish this purpose, a brief background on this research area, including the contributions of Narasimhan and Panwalkar and the contributions of Narasimhan and Mangiameli are first presented. The equivalence of the two scheduling rules (SPT & MD) is then shown both mathematically and via a simulation experiment.