Hybrid flow shop scheduling using genetic algorithms

We investigate the genetic algorithm approach for scheduling hybrid flow shops with minimum makespan as performance measure. The hybrid flow shop problem is characterized as the scheduling of jobs in a flow shop environment where, at any stage, there may exist multiple machines. The algorithm is based on the list scheduling principle by developing job sequences for the first stage and queuing the remaining stages in a FIFO manner. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm outperforms existing heuristic procedures and random search methods