Modeling & Solving Flexible Job Shop Problem With Sequence Dependent Setup Times

This paper addresses the flexible job shop (FJS) process planning and scheduling problem with two types of flexibility in process planning and sequence. Almost all of pervious research about FJS problem ignore setup times between jobs. In many realistic situations setup times depend on sequence of jobs. In these conditions it is not valid to absorb the set up times in processing times. In this study the FJS with sequence dependent setup times is modeled as a nonlinear mixed integer programming. The objective function is minimizing maximum completion time of jobs (makespan). The model is proven to be Np-complete. To solve the model an effective approach based on taboo search is developed. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is shown via numerical experiments