An effective iterated greedy algorithm for blocking hybrid flow shop problem with due date window

Abstract

In manufacturing, time interval is more practical as a due date than specific points in time. In this paper, we investigate the hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with a blocking constraint. This variant, which is seldom studied, is not considered when the objective is the minimization of the total weighted earliness tardiness from the due window. Since the studied problem is NPhard, we present a new heuristic method based on an iterated greedy algorithm. We present a computational campaign, including the re-implementation and comparison of four competing procedures. In order to prove the robustness of our method, we evaluated it using a new benchmark of more than 1000 instances. In fact, the experimental results revealed the efficiency of the proposed algorithm in terms of time requirements and solution quality