A Branch-and-Bound Based Heuristic Algorithm for Minimizing Makespan in Machining-Assembly Flowshop Scheduling

This paper proposes a heuristic algorithm, called list-based squeezing branch and bound algorithm, for solving a machine-fixed, machining-assembly flowshop scheduling problem to minimize makespan. The machine-fixed, machining-assembly flowshop consists of some parallel two-machine flow lines at a machining stage and one robot at an assembly stage. Since an optimal schedule for this problem is not always a permutation schedule, the proposed algorithm first finds a promising permutation schedule, and then searches better non-permutation schedules near the promising permutation schedule in an enumerative manner by elaborating a branching procedure in a branch and bound algorithm. The results of numerical experiments show that the proposed algorithm can efficiently provide an optimal or a near-optimal schedule with high accuracy such as mean relative error being less than 0.2% and the maximum relative error being at most 3%.