A heuristic to minimize total flow time in permutation flow shop

In this paper, we address an n-job, m-machine permutation flow shop scheduling problem for the objective of minimizing the total flow time. We propose a modification of the best-known method of Framinan and Leisten [An efficient constructive heuristic for flowtime minimization in permutation flow shops. Omega 2003;3 1:31 1-7] for this problem. We show, through computational experimentation, that this modification significantly improves its performance while not affecting its time-complexity. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.