Flowshop scheduling/sequencing research: a statistical review of the literature, 1952-1994

The entire life-cycle literature of flowshop scheduling/sequencing (FSS), 170 articles starting in 1952, was reviewed and classified on a scale ranging from pure theory to bona fide application. Second, the articles were classified in terms of seven types of research processes used by authors. Next, statistical correlations were performed relating data from the above two classifications. The findings show that the literature is dominated by what Ormerod and Kiossis call untested theory. This subset contains 155 out of 170 or 91% of the articles, with another 5.9% classified as metaresearch but mostly concerned with algorithm performance. A subset defined more comprehensively as pure theory, using synthetic “data” and modeling the m-machine n-jobs problem in a flowshop having a static sequencing policy with deterministic process parameters and using the ripple process (minor extensions of a previously well-explored problem) as a basic research strategy, contains 62 papers or 36.47% of the literature. During the first decade of the flowshop research (1952-1961), this category accounted for but one out of eight or 12.5% of the papers published, whereas during the most recent decade, it accounted for 23 papers or 33% of the literature. Last, questions are raised about the future of flowshop scheduling research vis-a-vis related subject matter, such as just-in-time inventory management, job shop scheduling, etc