Heuristic Approach for N-Job, 3-Machine Flow Shop Scheduling Problem Involving Transportation Time, Break Down Time and Weights of Jobs

This paper provides a new simple heuristic algorithm for a ‘3-Machine, n-job’ flow-shop scheduling problem in which jobs are attached with weights to indicate their relative importance and the transportation time and break down intervals of machine are given. A heuristic approach method to find optimal or near optimal sequence minimizing the total weighted mean production flow time for the problem has been discussed.