Rescheduling of flexible flow shop with sequence-dependent setup times and job splitting

Jun Kim, Je-Hun Lee, Seong-Lak Choi, Hyun-Jin Jung, Yun Bae Kim, Hyun-Jung Kim, Byung-Hee Kim, Gu-Hwan Chung

Abstract: This paper proposes rescheduling algorithms for improving schedules obtained by dispatching rules with a commercial software program, MozArt, developed by VMS Solutions Co., Ltd. Schedules for flexible flow shops with sequence-dependent setup times and job splitting are analyzed. The objective of the algorithms is to reduce the completion time by decreasing the number of setups and setup times. We first identify four types of problems with badly assigned job sequences and unnecessary idle times in given schedules derived from dispatching rules, and solve the problems by changing the sequence of jobs or splitting jobs. The performance of the proposed algorithms is tested with randomly generated instances based on real data from a factory in Korea.