《2016 An adaptive branch and bound approach for transforming job shops into flow shops》.pdf

Computers Industrial Engineering 52 (2007) 1–10 /locate/dsw An adaptive branch and bound approach for transforming job shops into flow shops Jose M. Framinan * Industrial Management, School of Engineering, University of Seville, Ave. Descubrimientos s/n, E41092 Seville, Spain Received 17 March 2006; received in revised form 30 August 2006; accepted 4 October 2006 Available online 20 November 2006 Abstract In this paper we address the problem of transforming a job shop layout into a flow shop with the objective of minimiz- ing the length of the resulting flow-line. First, we present five properties of the problem under consideration that are employed for constructing a branch and bound algorithm. The approach is named adaptive since the development of the children nodes depends on the particular instance in order to try tightening the lower bounds and hence performing faster. The computational experiments carried out show the approach to be effective for a variety of problem sizes. 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Scheduling theory; Branch and bound; Job shop; Flow shop 1. Introduction A flow shop consists of a sequence of machines (or workplaces) through which several products (or jobs) move in order to be processed. The flow of all products through the machines always follows the same direc- tion, although it is possible that some job does not have to be processed in a particular machine of the flow shop. The flow shop configuration has a number of advantages over the more general job shop, i.e.: • Minimal material handling, easier conveyance between cells, and greater control