Group scheduling on two cells with intercell movement

A set of jobs needs to be processed in a GT/CM system, which consists of two cells between which the intercell movement exists. One or more families are assigned to each of the cells. The problem under investigation is to determine a sequence of operations in each cell so as to minimize the mean flow time of jobs. Several properties of the problem are derived in this paper. These properties, together with a lower bound calculation, are used to develop a branch-and-bound solution procedure. A heuristic is also developed to solve large-sized problems. Computational results of both procedures are reported.