This work deals with the parallel machine scheduling problem which consists in the assignment of n jobs on m parallel machines. The most general variant of this problem is when the processing time depends on the machine to which each job is assigned to. This case is known as the unrelated...

The well-known NEH heuristic from Nawaz, Enscore and Ham proposed in 1983 has been recognized as the highest performing method for the permutation flowshop scheduling problem under the makespan minimization criterion. This performance lead is maintained even today when compared against...

The flowshop scheduling problem (FSP) has been widely studied in the literature and many techniques for its solution have been proposed. Some authors have concluded that genetic algorithms are not suitable for this hard, combinatorial problem unless hybridization is used. This work proposes new...

The distributed permutation flowshop problem has been recently proposed as a generalization of the regular flowshop setting where more than one factory is available to process jobs. Distributed manufacturing is a common situation for large enterprises that compete in a globalized market. The...

In the no-idle flowshop, machines cannot be idle after finishing one job and before starting the next one. Therefore, start times of jobs must be delayed to guarantee this constraint. In practice machines show this behavior as it might be technically unfeasible or uneconomical to stop a machine...

This paper deals with a realistic cyclic scheduling problem in the food industry environment in which parallel machines are considered to process perishable jobs with given release dates, due dates and deadlines. Jobs are subject to post-production shelf life limitation and must be delivered to...

This paper is an exploratory analysis of the efficacy of parliamentary representation as a means to moderate ethnic conflict in new democracies. We agree with many others that the interests of an ethnic minority group are better protected when the group has access to decision makers, can block...

In this work a new benchmark of hard instances for the permutation flowshop scheduling problem with the objective of minimising the makespan is proposed. The new benchmark consists of 240 large instances and 240 small instances with up to 800 jobs and 60 machines. One of the objectives of the...

The scheduling of flow shops with multiple parallel machines per stage, usually referred to as the hybrid flow shop (HFS), is a complex combinatorial problem encountered in many real world applications. Given its importance and complexity, the HFS problem has been intensively studied. This paper...

This paper deals with the development of customised and realistic manufacturing scheduling systems. More specifically, we focus onto a key element that may help driving their efficient design and implementation: i.e., the set of building blocks that should include a generic scheduling system and...