Developing a procedure-based genetic algorithm for overlapping flow shop scheduling

This study makes an attempt to develop a procedure-based genetic algorithm, abbreviated as PBGA, heuristic for solving the scheduling problem of overlap manufacturing. In spite of the mathematical formulation-based GA approaches had received considerable attention; the tasks of developing the formulation and then converting into GA heuristic are still troublesome. Accordingly, the attempt uses the scheduling procedure directly in GA¿s heuristic to solve overlap flow shop scheduling problem. By avoiding the mathematical formulation, the proposed heuristic is expected to be more acceptable by the users in flow shop environments and helpful as an effective overlap scheduling tool for different interests.