Permutation flowshop scheduling problem with total core idle time minimization

Abstract

In this paper, we present a deterministic permutation flowshop scheduling problem with a new objective function, the total core idle time. The interest of this objective is related to reduce the energy consumption of the system, taking into account that the energy needed during the processing times is constant, and that machines are switched off during the front and back idle times. Therefore, the energy consumption is dependent on the time where machines are in stand-by mode, i.e during the idle time of machines between jobs, named as core idle times. Constructive heuristics and metaheuristics are adapted from the permutation flowshop scheduling literature for classical objectives as makespan and total completion time. Additionally, a new variant of one of the metaheuristic is proposed, the VBIH-P. An experimental evaluation has been carried out to analyse the performance of all the methods. The results show an excellent performance of the VBIH-P compared to the adapted methods.