Robust optimization method for online flowshop problem with uncertain processing times and preemption penalties

Abstract

The flowshop scheduling problem has been one of the most attractive research issues. Deterministic flowshop problem is widely studied; whereas it is uncertain processing times has remained a challenge. In this paper, a robust heuristic method for this problem is presented, which is applicable whenever the lower and upper bounds of each job are available. The proposed method is capable of handling the perturbation which exists amongst the processing times. Therefore, the proposed robust method could guarantee that a small deviation of the processing times does not affect the feasibility. The performance of the proposed method is explored using some numerical examples.