Flow Shop Scheduling

In the development of scheduling models, the flow shop represents the most direct extension to jobs with multiple operations. This chapter deals with a model based on the design in which machines are arranged in series. In this design, jobs flow from an initial machine, through several intermediate machines, and ultimately to a final machine before completing. In a flow shop, the work in a job is broken down into separate tasks called operations, and each operation is performed at a different machine. A job is a collection of operations with a special precedence structure. The chapter describes the optimizing approaches and heuristic approaches for permutation schedules in the m‐machine makespan problem. An integer programming (IP) formulation can be built for the flow shop model and the makespan objective. The chapter discusses the variations of the m‐machine model such as ordered flow shops, flow shops with blocking, no‐wait flow shops, and so on.