Customer Order Scheduling in a Two Machine Flowshop

This paper considers a flowshop scheduling problem where a customer orders multiple products (jobs) from a production facility. The objectives are to minimize makespan and to minimize the sum of order (batch) completion times. The order cannot be shipped unless all the products in the order are manufactured. This problem was motivated by numerous real world problems encountered by a variety of manufacturers. For the makespan objective, we develop an optimal solution procedure which runs in polynomial time. For the sum of order completion time objective, we establish the complexity of the problem including several special cases. Then, we introduce a simple heuristic and find an asymptotically tight worst case bound on relative error. Finally, we conclude the paper with some implications.