caa a22 4500 445838817 CHVBK 20180317145337.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170323e20111001xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10951-010-0205-x doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10951-010-0205-x A water-flow algorithm for flexible flow shop scheduling withintermediate buffers [Elektronische Daten] [Trung Tran, Kien Ng] We investigate the flexible flow shop scheduling problem with limited or unlimited intermediate buffers. A common objective of the problem is to find a production schedule that minimizes the completion time of jobs. Other objectives that we also consider are minimizing the total weighted flow time of jobs and minimizing the total weighted tardiness time of jobs. We propose a water-flow algorithm to solve this scheduling problem. The algorithm is inspired by the hydrological cycle in meteorology and the erosion phenomenon in nature. In the algorithm, we combine the amount of precipitation and its falling force to form a flexible erosion capability. This helps the erosion process of the algorithm to focus on exploiting promising regions strongly. To initiate the algorithm, we use a constructive procedure to obtain a seed permutation. We also use an improvement procedure for constructing a complete schedule from a permutation that represents the sequence of jobs in the first stage of the scheduling problem. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, we use benchmark instances taken from the literature and randomly generated instances of the scheduling problem. The computational results demonstrate the efficacy of the algorithm. We have also obtained several improved solutions for the benchmark instances using the proposed algorithm. We further illustrate the algorithm's capability for solving problems in practical applications by applying it to a maltose syrup production problem. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 2010 Water-flow algorithm nationallicence Metaheuristic nationallicence Flexible flow shop scheduling nationallicence Intermediate buffers nationallicence Tran Trung Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, 119260, Singapore, Singapore aut Ng Kien Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, 119260, Singapore, Singapore aut Journal of Scheduling Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com 14/5(2011-10-01), 483-500 1094-6136 14:5<483 2011 14 10951 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10951-010-0205-x text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10951-010-0205-x text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Tran Trung Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, 119260, Singapore, Singapore aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Ng Kien Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, 119260, Singapore, Singapore aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Journal of Scheduling Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com 14/5(2011-10-01), 483-500 1094-6136 14:5<483 2011 14 10951 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer