Application of genetic algorithm in permutation flow shop to optimize the makespan

This paper addresses the modern manufacturing environment nature in the scheduling point of view. The scheduling is the vital criteria to allocate available resource over a period of time with one or more objective(s). The new heuristic (EPDT heuristic) is proposed for the flow shop problems to achieve the optimal makespan with the application of Genetic Algorithm (GA). This proposed heuristic approach, approximately solve the problem that consists in scheduling the jobs using Exponential Distribution factor which helps in developing a mathematical model with less computational instance. The characteristic of the heuristic was evaluated by solving Taillard benchmark problem in MATLAB environment. The EPDT heuristic yields a better result compared to classical heuristics; Palmer, CR, Gupta, and CDS heuristics.