Algorithms for bicriteria minimization in the permutation flow shop scheduling problem

This paper presents two bi-objective simulated annealing procedures to deal with the classical permutation flow shop scheduling problem considering the makespan and the total completion time as criteria. The proposed methods are based on multi-objective simulated annealing techniques combined with constructive and heuristic algorithms. A computational experiment has been carried out and different metrics have been computed to check various attributes of each method. For all the tested instances a net set of potentially efficient schedules has been obtained and compared with previously published results. Results indicate that the proposed algorithms provide efficient solutions with little computational effort which can serve as input for interactive procedures.