Heuristics Resolution of a Constrained Hybrid Flow Shop Problem

Flow shop problems have been extensively studied over the last decade, and numerous works have been published in this area. This paper deals with limited intermediate storage in hybrid flow shop organisation, considering unrelated volumes depending on jobs and including support constraints. For example, in many textile production systems, there are limited buffer storage between workshops and fixed numbers of conveyance supports. Such multistage production system uses iron beams (supports) on which yarn is rolled up. After partial processing on the system, the beams are emptied out and are recovered to be used again. The optimised criterion which is studied in this paper, is makespan (the biggest achievement date of jobs is minimised).