Flowshop scheduling research after five decades

Since Johnson's seminal paper in 1954, flowshop scheduling problems have received considerable research attention over the last fifty years. As a result, several optimization and heuristic solution procedures are available to solve a variety of flowshop scheduling problems. This paper provides a brief glimpse into the evolution of flowshop scheduling problems and possible approaches for their solution over the last fifty years. It briefly introduces the current flowshop problems being solved and the approaches being taken to solve (optimally or approximately) them. The paper concludes with some fruitful directions for future research. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.