A hierarchical approach for the FMS scheduling problem

This paper considers the scheduling problem in a Flexible Manufacturing System. The objective is to minimize the makespan of a set of jobs. The problem resembles a job-shop scheduling problem. However, it is complicated by the ability to perform several of the operations on more than one machine, and the disability of the material handling system to handle more than a fixed number of jobs at the same time. A hierarchical algorithm based on the similarities with the job-shop scheduling problem is proposed and satisfactory computational results are provided.