Scheduling a bi-criteria flowshop manufacturing cell with sequence-dependent family setup times

Flowshop manufacturing cell scheduling problems (FMCSPs) with sequence-dependent family setup times (SDFSTs) have become a key area in the field of scheduling. Though the need to consider multiple criteria in real-world scheduling is widely recognised, most of the currently available algorithms for FMCSPs with SDFSTs only deal with the optimisation of a single performance criterion. In this study, a two-level multi-start simulated annealing (TLMSA) heuristic was presented for this problem with the objectives of simultaneously minimising makespan and total flow time (or total tardiness). To validate the performance of the proposed approach, the obtained sets of non-dominated solutions were evaluated by seven multi-objective performance indicators. The computational results showed that the proposed TLMSA significantly outperforms the benchmark algorithm in terms of the seven performance indicators. It is believed that it can serve as a new benchmark approach for future research on the two FMCSPs with SDFSTs addressed in this study. [Received 15 January 2010; Revised 20 May 2010; 15 November 2010; Accepted 24 February 2011]