New Heuristic Algorithm for Flow Shop Scheduling with 3 Machines and 2 Robots Considering the Breakdown Interval of Machines and Robots Simultaneously

Scheduling is an important subject of production and operations management area. In flow-shop scheduling, the objective is to obtain a sequence of jobs which when processed in a fixed order of machines, will optimize some well defined criteria. The concept of transportation time is very important in scheduling. Transportation can be done by robots. In situations that robots are used to transport materials (material handler), breakdown of the machines and robots have a significant role in the production concern. This paper deals with minimization of the total elapsed time for flow shop scheduling problem (number of machine=3) in which the effect of machine and robots breakdown interval are considered simultaneously. Furthermore, by providing an example, the proposed algorithm is described. A summary and future works conclude the paper