Open Access

ARTICLE

Minimization of completion time variance in flowshops using genetic algorithms

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1 Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Ha’il, Saudi Arabia
2 Department of Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
3 College of Engineering, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

* Corresponding Author: Imran Ali Chaudhry ()

Revista Internacional de Métodos Numéricos para Cálculo y Diseño en Ingeniería 2022, 38(2), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.23967/j.rimni.2022.05.002

Accepted 22 May 2022; Issue published 02 June 2022

Abstract

The majority of the flowshop scheduling literature focuses on regular performance measures like makespan, flowtime etc. In this paper a flowshop scheduling problem is addressed where the objective is to minimize completion time variance (CTV). CTV is a non-regular performance measure that is closely related to just-in-time philosophy. A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet-based genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to solve the problem. The proposed GA methodology is domain-independent and general purpose. The flowshop model is developed in the spreadsheet environment using the built-in formulae and function. Addition of jobs and machines can be catered for without the change in the basic GA routine and minimal change to the spreadsheet model. The proposed methodology offers an easy-to-handle framework whereby the practitioners can implement a heuristic-based optimization tool with the need for advanced programming tools. The performance of the proposed methodology is compared to previous studies for benchmark problems taken from the literature. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed methodology solves the benchmark problems efficiently and effectively with a reasonable accuracy. The solutions are comparable to previous studies both in terms of computational time and solution quality.

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