Background: Overcrowding is an important problem for outpatient services in healthcare facilities. Patient flow analysis (PFA) is a useful method for identifying inefficiencies in and facilitating patient flow. Objective: PFA was used to estimate patient wait time and determine how different clinical disciplines impact wait times in the studied hospital.<...

In this paper we deal with solution algorithms for a general formulation of the job shop problem, called alternative graph. We study in particular the job shop scheduling problem with blocking and/or no-wait constraints. Most of the key properties developed for solving the job shop problem with infinite capacity buffer do not hold in the more general alternative graph model. In this paper we re...

In this paper, mathematical models for permutation flow shop scheduling and job shop scheduling problems are proposed. The first problem is based on a mixed integer programming model. As the problem is NP-complete, this model can only be used for smaller instances where an optimal solution can be computed. For large instances, another model is proposed which is suitable for solving the problem ...

This thesis deals mainly with makespan minimization in Flow-Shop and hybrid Flow-Shop scheduling problems where mixed blocking constraints are considered. In Flow-Shop scheduling problem, a set of N jobs must be executed on a set of M machines. All jobs require the same operation order that must be executed according to the same manufacturing process. Each machine can only execute one job at an...

This paper deal with the problem of no-wait hybrid flow shop which sequence dependent setup times, ready time and machine availability constraint. Minimizing the mean tardiness is considered as the objective to develop the optimal scheduling algorithm. To do so, an efficient hybrid imperialist competitive algorithm (HICA) is proposed to tackle this problem. Our proposed algorithm is compared to...

This paper deals with the cyclic flow shop robotic cell scheduling problem with multiple single and dual gripper robots, in which multiple part types are processed on multiple machines successively with free, time-windows and no-wait pickup criteria. The robots execute the transportation of parts between the machines. A novel comprehensive mixed-integer linear programming model has been propose...

This paper deal with the problem of no-wait hybrid flow shop which sequence dependent setup times, ready time and machine availability constraint. Minimizing the mean tardiness is considered as the objective to develop the optimal scheduling algorithm. To do so, an efficient hybrid imperialist competitive algorithm (HICA) is proposed to tackle this problem. Our proposed algorithm is compared to...

Sequencing and scheduling are forms of decision making which play a key role in manufacturing. This paper presents the description of a scheduling algorithm for the solution of the no-wait ̄ow-shop problem. The goal of the heuristic is to minimise the sum of the total ̄owtimes, a criterion which at the same time minimises the average processing time. This is a sensible target in applications su...

The No-Wait Job Shop (NWJS) considered here is a version of the job shop scheduling problem where, for any two operations of a job, a fixed time lag between their starting times is given. Also, sequence-dependent set-up times between consecutive operations on a machine can be present. The NWJS problem consists in finding a schedule that minimizes the makespan. We address here the so-called Opti...

This paper deal with the problem of no-wait hybrid flow shop which sequence dependent setup times, ready time and machine availability constraint. Minimizing the mean tardiness is considered as the objective to develop the optimal scheduling algorithm. To do so, an efficient hybrid imperialist competitive algorithm (HICA) is proposed to tackle this problem. Our proposed algorithm is compared to...