A comparison of permutation flowshop scheduling heuristics for limited waiting time constraints

The permutation flowshop scheduling problem with limited waiting time constraints, which requires that the waiting time of any job between two consecutive machines is not greater than a given upper bound, widely exists in the industrial manufacture with continuous production in high temperature environment or with intermediate products which are easily deteriorated. To explore an effective solving approach for the problem, some flowshop scheduling heuristics are extended for limited waiting time constraints and a comparison of those heuristics is carried out. Computational tests demonstrate the relationship between problem characteristics and algorithm performance, and show the adaptability of the heuristics.