An effective approach for total completion time minimization subject to makespan constraint in permutation flowshops

This article addresses the permutation flowshop scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing the total completion time subject to a makespan constraint. The makespan is related to system utilization while the total completion time is related to the waiting time, and hence to the work in process (WIP); in real contexts, focusing on both total completion time and makespan allows a good trade-off between WIP and utilization to be found. Two local search algorithms are developed in the paper and, by using an extensive computational experience on literature benchmark instances, they are proved to be able to find good solutions both for regular and no-wait flowshops.