An adaptive large neighbourhood search algorithm for blocking flowshop scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times

Flowshop scheduling problem (FSP) belongs to the classical combinatorial optimisation problem and takes different forms under different production conditions. To make the general form of FSP closer to the real production environment, two assumptions, including blocking and sequence-dependent setup time, were added. The first attempt of the current research work is proposing a mathematical model according to two different viewpoints about blocking occurrence affected by sequence-dependent setup time that try to use the dead time (blocking or idle time) for setting-up the next job. Due to the complex intrinsic of combinatorial problems, achieving the exact result on a large-scale through a mathematical model is almost complicated. The second attempt is developing an adaptive large neighbourhood search algorithm to solve the problem on a large-scale which is accelerated by a new constructive heuristic algorithm. Extensive computational experiments on various size problems support the efficiency of the proposed algorithms.