A New Heuristic Approach for Specially Structured Two Stage Flow ShopScheduling to Minimize the Rental Cost, Processing Time, Associated withProbabilities Including Transportation Time, Job Block Criteria and JobWeightage

The present paper is attempt to develop a new heuristic algorithm, an alternative to the traditional algorithm proposed by Johnson’s (1954) to find the optimal sequence to minimize the utilization time of the machines and hence their rental cost for two stage specially structured flow shop scheduling under specified rental policy in which processing times are associated with probabilities including transportation time and job block criteria. Further jobs are attached with weights to indicate their relative importance. The proposed method is very simple and easy to understand and also provide an important tool for the decision maker. Algorithm is justified by numerical illustration.