Effective Iterated Greedy Algorithm for Flow-Shop Scheduling Problems with Time lags

Flow shop scheduling problem with time lags is a practical scheduling problem and attracts many studies. Permutation problem（PFSP with time lags） is concentrated but non-permutation problem（non-PFSP with time lags） seems to be neglected. With the aim to minimize the makespan and satisfy time lag constraints, efficient algo- rithms corresponding to PFSP and non-PFSP problems are proposed, which consist of iterated greedy algorithm for permutation（IGTLP） and iterated greedy algorithm for non-permutation （IGTLNP）. The proposed algorithms are verified using well-known simple and complex instances of permutation and non-permutation problems with various time lag ranges. The permutation results indicate that the proposed IGTLP can reach near optimal solution within nearly 11% computational time of traditional GA approach. The non-permutation results indicate that the proposed IG can reach nearly same solution within less than 1% com- putational time compared with traditional GA approach. The proposed research combines PFSP and non-PFSP together with minimal and maximal time lag consideration, which provides an interesting viewpoint for industrial implementation.