Three heuristic procedures for the stochastic, two-machine flow shop problem

Although the deterministic flow shop model is one of the most widely studied problems in scheduling theory, its stochastic analog has remained a challenge. No computationally efficient optimization procedure exists even for the general two-machine version. In this paper, we describe three heuristic procedures for the stochastic two-machine flow shop problem and report on computational experiments that compare their effectiveness. We focus on heuristic procedures that can be adapted for dispatching without the need for computer simulation or computer-based search. We find that all three are capable of quickly generating solutions close to the best known sequences, which were obtained by extensive search.