Spreadsheet approach for solving complex flowshop scheduling problems

Méndez et al., [1] proposed an elegant MILP that provides a solution to a complicated short-term scheduling of resource-constraint multistage flowshop batch facilities. Moreover, the work presents a three-variation of the problem and provides a solution for each variation. In recent years, many metaheuristics are developed to work as add-in to spreadsheet popular software to provide solutions for optimization problems. This paper reports on an application of spreadsheet based Genetic Algorithm (GA) to solve the problem reported by Méndez. Moreover, our results indicate that it is possible to solve complex scheduling problems using the proposed approach, however, spreadsheet formulation knowledge and modelling skills are required.