Flowshop scheduling with limited temporary storage

We examine the problem of scheduling 2-machine flowshops in order to minimize makespan, using a limited amount of intermediate storage buffers. Although there are efficient algorithms for the extreme cases of zero and infinite buffer capacities, we show that all the intermediate (finite capacity) cases are NP-complete. We prove exact bounds for the relative improvement of execution times when a given buffer capacity is used. We also analyze an efficient heuristic for solving the 1-buffer problem, showing that it has a 3/2 worst-case performance. Furthermore, we show that the "no-wait" (i.e., zero buffer) flowshop scheduling problem with 4 machines is NP-complete. This partly settles a well-known open question, although the 3-machine case is left open here.

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