An Improved Algorithm for Minimizing Makespan on Flowshops with Uncertain Processing Times

Abstract

We address the four-machine flowshop scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing makespan with uncertain processing times The problem was investigated in the literature (RAIRO Operations Research 54, 529-553) and different algorithms were proposed. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for the problem. The new proposed algorithm is compared with the best existing algorithm in the literature by using extensive computational experiments. Computational experiments show that the new proposed algorithm performs much better than the best existing algorithm in the literature in terms of error while both have the same computational time. Specifically, the new proposed algorithm reduces the error of the best existing algorithm in the literature about 40%. This result has been confirmed by using hypotheses testing with a significance level of 0.01.