The distributedpermutationflowshopschedulingproblem

This paperstudiesanewgeneralizationoftheregularpermutationflowshopschedulingproblem(PFSP) referred toasthedistributedpermutationflowshopschedulingproblemorDPFSP.Underthisgeneral- ization, weassumethatthereareatotalof F identical factoriesorshops,eachonewith m machines disposed inseries.Asetof n available jobshavetobedistributedamongthe F factories andthenapro- cessing sequencehastobederivedforthejobsassignedtoeachfactory.Theoptimizationcriterionisthe minimization ofthemaximumcompletiontimeormakespanamongthefactories.Thisproductionsetting is necessaryintodayʹsdecentralizedandglobalizedeconomywhereseveralproductioncentersmightbe available forafirm.WecharacterizetheDPFSPandproposesixdifferentalternativemixedintegerlinear programming (MILP)modelsthatarecarefullyandstatisticallyanalyzedforperformance.Wealsopropose two simplefactoryassignmentrulestogetherwith14heuristicsbasedondispatchingrules,effective constructive heuristicsandvariableneighborhooddescentmethods.Acomprehensivecomputationaland statistical analysisisconductedinordertoanalyzetheperformanceoftheproposedmethods.