FLOWSHOP SEQUENCING WITH MEAN FLOWTIME OBJECTIVE

This paper introduces a near-optimal heuristic based on sorting method s to minimize the total or mean flowtime (completion time) for the n-j ob, M-machine flowshop. The mean flowtime criterion is important, beca use many important cost measures, such as finished goods turn-over, de pend on flowtime. A simulation study is conducted to test the effectiv eness of the proposed heuristic by comparing it with those of Rajendra n and Rajendran and Chaudhuri. The simulation results show that the pr oposed heuristic performs better than the two existing heuristics, esp ecially when the number of jobs is large (greater-than-or-equal-to 20) . Further, the results show that the proposed heuristic averages to 0. 16% above the optimum for 2000 small test problems, ranging from five to nine jobs and from three to ten machines.