A Two-Stage Three-Machine Flow Shop Assembly Problem Mixed with a Controllable Number and Sum-of-Processing Times-Based Learning Effect by Simulated Annealing Algorithms

The two-stage assembly scheduling problem is widely used in industrial and service industries. This study focuses on the two-stage three-machine flow shop assembly problem mixed with a controllable number and sum-of-processing times-based learning effect, in which the job processing time is considered to be a function of the control of the truncation parameters and learning based on the sum of the processing time. However, the truncation function is very limited in the two-stage flow shop assembly scheduling settings. Thus, this study explores a two-stage three-machine flow shop assembly problem with truncated learning to minimize the makespan criterion. To solve the proposed model, we derive several dominance rules, lemmas, and lower bounds applied in the branch-and-bound method. On the other hand, three simulated annealing algorithms are proposed for finding approximate solutions. In both the small and large size number of job situations, the SA algorithm is better than the JS algorithm in this study. All the experimental results of the proposed algorithm are presented on small and large job sizes, respectively.

A Scheduling Problem to Minimize Total Weighted Tardiness in the Two-Stage Assembly Flowshop

This paper considers an assembly scheduling problem which minimizes the total weighted tardiness. The system consists of multiple manufacturing machines in the first stage and an assembly machine in the second stage. A job is composed of multiple components, each component is manufactured on a dedicated machine in the first stage, and the assembly starts on the assembly machine after the completion of all the components’ manufacturing in the first stage. This paper is to try to find effective and efficient schedules to minimize the total weighted tardiness of jobs. This paper analyzes some solution properties to improve search effectiveness and efficiency. Moreover, some lower-bound procedures are derived, and then four constructive heuristics and a branch-and-bound algorithm are suggested. The performances of the derived algorithms are evaluated through numerical experiments. For the problems with no more than 15 jobs, the branch-and-bound algorithm finds the optimal solutions within 20 minutes, and the performance of the four heuristics seems to be similar. However, for problems with more than 30 jobs, HWT shows the best performance among the four heuristics except for two machines.