Heuristic Approach Forn-jobs, 3 Machines Flow Shop Scheduling Problem Involving Transportation Time, Equivalent Job-block, Weights of Jobs and Break down Time Interval

In 1980 Miyazaki considered the weight of a job in which weight shows the relative priority over some other job in a sequencing of different jobs. After that some researchers such as Ghanshiam Das, Singh and Singhal [1981], Panwalker [1991] Sotskov, Allahverdi and Lai [2000], Chandramouli (2005) and Belwal, Mittal (2008) had considered the idea of N-job 2 machine flow shop scheduling problem with breakdown of machines, transportation time and equivalent job block. This paper provides a heuristic algorithm of N-jobs, 3 machines flow shop scheduling problem in which weight of jobs, transportation time, break down intervals of machine and equivalent job block are given. A heuristic decomposition principle (Johnson’s technique 1954) is used to obtain the optimal or near to optimal sequence to minimizing the total weighted mean production flow time and minimizes the total elapsed time.