Flow shop scheduling with low carbon emission and variable machining parameters

Synergistic improvement on low carbon manufacturing is not taken full consideration in flow shop scheduling in literatures. To fill the gap, this article extends a flow shop scheduling problem by considering low carbon emission and variable machining parameters. The difference between the extended scheduling problem and the traditional one is that the former investigates the comprehensive effects of machine and scheduling levels on production throughput and environmental impact. A mathematical model of the extended problem is formulated to find the Pareto frontier, which is the set of scheduling solutions that are all Pareto efficient. Moreover, two problem-specific scheduling methods are presented and their effects on the considered problem are proved. A novel multi-objective heuristic is developed to deal with the extended problem because it is a non-deterministic polynomial acceptable problem. An actual case is studied to demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of the proposed extended problem and two scheduling methods. These finds can be employed in manufacturing execution systems and do not require additional cost.