Efficient heuristics for flowshop sequencing with the objectives of makespan and flowtime minimisation

In this paper we analyse the performance of flowshop sequencing heuristics with respect to the objectives of makespan and flowtime minimisation. For flowtime minimisation, we propose the strategy employed by the NEH heuristic to construct partial solutions. Results show that this approach outperforms the common fast heuristics for flowtime minimisation while performing similarly or slightly worse than others which, on reward, prove to be much more CPU time-consuming. Additionally, the suggested approach is well balanced with respect to makespan and flowtime minimisation. Based on the previous results, two algorithms are proposed for the sequencing problem with multiple objectives - makespan and flowtime minimisation. These algorithms provide the decision maker with a set of heuristically efficient solutions such that he/she may choose the most suitable sequence for a given ratio between costs associated with makespan and those assigned to flowtime. Computational experience shows both algorithms to perform better than the current heuristics designed for the two-criteria problem. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.