Minimizing the makespan in the non-preemptive job-shop scheduling with limited machine availability

This paper addresses the makespan minimization in a job-shop environment where the machines are not available during the whole planning horizon. The disjunctive graph model is used to represent the schedules and the concept of blocks is generalized to include the unavailability periods of machines. To solve the problem, we develop a taboo thresholding heuristic that uses a new block-based neighborhood function. Some sufficient conditions to eliminate the evaluation of non-improving moves are proposed. Experiments performed on existing problem instances of the literature show the efficiency of the proposed heuristic.