A cyclical search for the two machine flow shop and open shop to minimise finishing time

This paper considers scheduling problems on two machines to minimise the makespan. It shows that a simple cyclical search can find a flow shop schedule with one job omitted with makespan less than or equal to the maximum of the total processing time of all jobs on either machine. This flow shop schedule is used as the basis for constructing a number of schedules with minimum makespan for the two machine open shop. The search may be applied unchanged to batches of jobs to provide more optimal schedules.