Search heuristics for a flowshop scheduling problem in a printed circuit board assembly process

Search heuristics for a flowshop scheduling problem in a printed circuit board assembly process

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Article ID: iaor1999162
Country: Netherlands
Volume: 91
Issue: 1
Start Page Number: 124
End Page Number: 143
Publication Date: May 1996
Journal: European Journal of Operational Research
Authors: , ,
Keywords: flowshop, tabu search, electronics industry
Abstract:

We consider a scheduling problem in a factory producing printed circuit boards (PCBs). The PCB assembly process in this factory can be regarded as a flowshop which has two special characteristics: jobs have sequence dependent setup times and each job consists of a lot (batch) of identical PCBs. Because of the latter characteristic, it is possible to start a job on a following machine before the job is entirely completed on a previous machine, that is, there is time-lag between machines. In this paper, we propose several heuristics, including tabu search (TS) and simulated annealing (SA) methods, for this generalized flowshop scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing mean tardiness. We compare suggested heuristics after series of tests to find appropriate values for parameters needed for the two search algorithms, TS and SA. Results of computational tests on randomly generated test problems are reported.

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