International Journal of Management (IJM), OF MANAGEMENT (IJM) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 6510(Online), Volume

me 3, Issue 2, May-August (2012) ISSN 0976 6367(Print) ISSN 0976 6375(Online) Volume 3, Issue 2, May- August (2012), pp. 54-58 IAEME: www.iaeme.com/ijm.html Journal Impact Factor (2011): 1.5030 (Calculated by GISI) www.jifactor.com

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TWO-MACHINE NO-WAIT FLOWSHOP SCHEDULING- A NEW APPROACH

Dr. Sunita Gupta Galaxy global Group of Institutions Ambala (Haryana) INDIA sunigupt@yahoo.co.in ABSTRACT No-wait scheduling problem is one of the classical scheduling problem that exist on many kinds of industries with no-wait constraint, such as metal working, plastic, chemical and food industries. In the two-machine no-wait flowshop problem, each job has to be processed on both the machines subject to the constraint that the processing on 2nd machine follows the processing on machine 1 without waiting. In this paper the twomachine no-wait flowshop scheduling problem in which each machine may have an availability constraint is considered and the objective is to find an optimal sequence in which the jobs will not wait for second machine after the process on first machine. Key words: flowshop scheduling, idle time of machines, No-wait scheduling, optimized sequence. 1. INTRODUCTION Scheduling tasks are applied in many fields of industrial production as they intend to optimally utilize the resources while meeting the customer requirements. Scheduling is considered for the allocation of available resources to a set of operations or tasks over a planning horizon, the objective being to best satisfy one or more performance criteria e.g. minimum make span, idle time or mean completion time etc. In a flow shop, the scheduling problem can be classified into two categories namely with and without an operation interval waiting time. In a flow shop system with waiting times, the jobs are processed from one machine to the next one allowing waiting time in between, whereas, in a no-wait flow shop system, the jobs are processed from one machine to the next machine without waiting time. Therefore, in the classical flow shop sequencing problem with waiting time jobs may be queued in front of each machine. In such a case, an unlimited buffer is considered at the front of each machine (Grabowski
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International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 6510(Online), Volume 3, Issue 2, May-August (2012)

and Pempera, 2000 [4]).Johnson 1954 [6] has developed an algorithm to minimize the makespane in such type of situation. In contrast, in a no-wait flowshop, jobs are processed from one machine to the next without waiting time. There are two main reasons for having a no-wait scheduling environment: either initiated from the nature of production or the lack of intermediate buffers. In some industries, due to the temperature or other attributes of the materials it is required that each operation follow the previous one immediately. This means, when necessary, the start of a job on a given machine is delayed in order that the operations completion coincides with the start of the next operation on the subsequent machine. Similarly, a no-wait flow shop aims at minimizing the in process buffer to obtain Just In Time production. Applications of a no-wait flow shop can be found in many industries such as plastic production processes that require a series of processes to immediately follow one after another in order to prevent material degradation during production. Similar situations also arise in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Aldowaisan and Allahverdi, 2004 [1]; Candar, O. (1999) [2]; Grabowski and Pempera, 2000 [4]; Hall and Sriskandarajah, 1996 [5]; Raaymakers and Hoogeveen, 2000 [7] have studied the no-wait problem extensively in the scheduling literature. Hall and Sriskandarajah (1996) [5] reviewed the literature on this subject. Reddi and Ramamurthy (1972) [8] proposed the Travelling Salesman Problem technique to solve the flow shop scheduling problem. Gilmore and Gomory (1964) [3] also studied a two stage, single processor no-wait flow shop problem using the Travelling Salesman Problem techniques. The results of the investigation revealed that a Travelling Salesman Problem based branch and bound algorithm obtained optimal solutions. In this paper, a no-wait two stage flow shop scheduling problem with minimum flow time is investigated. The aim of this paper is to investigate the performance of the proposed heuristic algorithms to solve a no-wait two stage flow shop scheduling problem with minimum flow time. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Assumptions and the notations used in the paper are denoted in section 2. In Section 3, the problem studied in this research is described in detail. In Section 4, the structure of the proposed algorithms is explained. Then numerical tests are established to solve the problems in section 5. This is followed by a demonstration of the simulation results. Finally Section 6 presents a summary of the research with concluding remarks and recommendations for further research. 2. ASSUMPTION & NOTATIONS Consider an n job 2 machine no-wait flowshop scheduling problem where the machines are ceaselessly ready to be used from time zero onwards. At any time, every job can be processed at most one machine and every machine can process at most one job. Preemption is not permitted; i.e., once an operation is started, it must be completed without interruption M1 M2 Ji S i 1st Machine 2nd Machine ith job optimal sequence ith position of the job in optimal sequence
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International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 6510(Online), Volume 3, Issue 2, May-August (2012)

3. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION The problem studied in this paper is a no-wait two stage flow shop scheduling problem. The performance of the proposed heuristic algorithm is studied in terms of the Minimization of flow time. The structure of the problems studied is as follows. A set of n jobs J = j1, j2, , jn are to be processed in a shop. Each job consists of two operations to be processed in two subsequent stages namely S1 and S2. No-waiting time is allowed between the two subsequent operations. Stages S1 and S2 have M1 and M2 machines, respectively. The processing times of job i is Pi1 and Pi2 on machines M1 and M2 respectively. Hence, n jobs have n! possible schedules and in this paper an heuristic algorithm for the above problem is proposed. The framework of this algorithm is described in the next section. 4. PROPOSED ALGORITHM To find an optimal sequence S of the jobs processing on two the machines we will follow the following steps:1. Select a job having maximum processing time on machine M1 and put it at the first position of the sequence S. Let it be 1. 2. Now to select the 2nd job 2 of the optimal sequence S, consider all the jobs whose processing time on M1 is greater than the processing time of 1 on M2 and among them the one whose processing time is maximum on M2 is considered as 2nd job of the optimal sequence. It is denoted by 2. 3. For the next selection of jobs in the sequence, again consider the jobs whose processing time on M1 is greater than the processing time of 2 on M2 and among them the one whose processing time is maximum on M2 is considered as 3rd job as 3. Continue this process till the jobs are available. 4. If no such job is available whose processing time on M1 is greater than the processing time of its previous job on M2 then go to step 1 again till all the jobs are considered. 5. If there are more than one jobs having same maximum processing time on machine1 during the selection of jobs for the optimal sequence, than consider the one whose processing time on machine 2 is maximum. 5. COMPUTATIONAL EXPERIMENTS In this study, a test problem is used to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The data sets used in this research are created in various sizes in terms of seven jobs processing on two machines. Tab. 1 demonstrates the processing time of jobs on machines M1 and M2 in the problem.

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International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 6510(Online), Volume 3, Issue 2, May-August (2012)

Job M1 M2

J1 8 15

J2 21 12

J3 14 18

J4 10 13

J5 15 20

J6 16 9

J7 21 15

Table 1 5.1 Solution for the optimal sequence To find the optimal sequence the steps of proposed algorithm are as follows 1. There are two jobs J2 & J7 having maximum processing time i.e. 21 on machine M1 but job J7 has the greater processing time 15 on M2. So 1 = J7 2. Now for the selection of 2nd job , there are three jobs J2 J5& J6 but the processing time of J5 on M2 is maximum. So 2 = J5 3. Following the next steps of the algorithm, the sequence S= { J7, J5, J3, J2, J1, J6,J4 } is an optimal sequence

5.2 Optimal Makespane and the idle time of the machines jobs 7 M1 M2 0-21 21-36 5 21-36 36-56 2 36-57 57-69 3 57-71 71-89 6 73-89 89-98 4 89-99 99-112 Idle time 104-112 7 units 112-127 4 units 1

6. CONCLUSION & FURTHER RESEARCH In this paper, a new algorithm is developed to solve the no-wait two stage flow shop scheduling problem. For this purpose, a numerical experiment is established to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. In general the results revealed that the proposed outperforms gives an optimal sequence which minimizes the flow time and the machines idle time of the problem. So in case of finding hiring time of the machines or the machine utility cost, this algorithm is very useful. Therefore the proposed algorithm can be considered as an efficient algorithm for a no-wait two stage flow shop with minimum flow time. For further research, it is recommended that the performance of the proposed algorithm with respect to other performance measures such as due time, lateness and tardiness of the jobs be investigated and even on three or more machines. In addition, the performance of the proposed algorithms for a problem with a sequence dependent set up time, transportation time, job blocking concept are also worth studying.

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International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 6510(Online), Volume 3, Issue 2, May-August (2012)

REFERENCES [1] Aldowaisan, T. and Allahverdi, A. (2004). A New heuristics for m-machine no-wait flow shop to minimize total completion time. Omega, 32:345352. [2] Candar, O. (1999). Machine scheduling problems with blocking and no-wait in process. Department of Industrial Engineering. Research Report, Bilkunt University. [3] Gilmore, P. and Gomory, E. (1964). Sequencing a one statevariable machine: A solvable case of the traveling salesman problem. Operations Research, 12(5):655679. [4] Grabowski, J. and Pempera, J. (2000). Sequencing of jobs in some production system. European Journal of Operational Research, 125:535550. [5] Hall, N. and Sriskandarayah, C. (1996). A survey of machine scheduling problems with blocking and no-wait in process. Operations Research, 44:510525. [6] Johnson, S.M (1954), optimal two and three stage production scheduling with set up times included , Nav Res Log Quart, Vol1 pp 61-88. [7] Raaymakers, W. and Hoogeveen, J. (2000). Scheduling multipurpose batch process industries with no-wait restrictions by simulated annealing. European Journal of Operational Research, 126: 131151. [8] Reddi, S. and Ramamoorthy, C. (1972). On the flow shop sequencing problem with no-wait in process. Operational Research Quarterly, 23(3):323331.

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