Minimizing makespan in a flow-line manufacturing cell with sequence dependent family setup times

This paper presents a new mathematical model for the problem of scheduling part families and jobs within each part family in a flow line manufacturing cell where the setup times for each family are sequence dependent and it is desired to minimize the maximum completion time of the last job on the last machine (makespan) while processing parts (jobs) in each family together. Gaining an optimal solution for this type of complex problem in large sizes in reasonable computational time using traditional approaches or optimization tools is extremely difficult. A meta-heuristic method based on Simulated Annealing (SA) is proposed to solve the presented model. Based on the computational analyses, the proposed algorithm was found efficient and effective at finding good quality solutions.