Flowshop-scheduling problems with makespan criterion: a review

This paper is a complete survey of flowshop-scheduling problems and contributions from early works of Johnson of 1954 to recent approaches of metaheuristics of 2004. It mainly considers a flowshop problem with a makespan criterion and it surveys some exact methods (for small size problems), constructive heuristics and developed improving metaheuristic and evolutionary approaches as well as some well-known properties and rules for this problem. Each part has a brief literature review of the contributions and a glimpse of that approach before discussing the implementation for a flowshop problem. Moreover, in the first section, a complete literature review of flowshop-related scheduling problems with different assumptions as well as contributions in solving these other aspects is considered. This paper can be seen as a reference to past contributions (particularly in n/m/p/cmax or equivalently F/prmu/cmax) for future research needs of improving and developing better approaches to flowshop-related scheduling problems.