Resource-constrained flowshop scheduling with separate resource recycling operations

Abstract

This paper considers the relocation problem arising from public re-development projects cast as a two-machine flowshop scheduling problem. In such a project, some buildings need to be torn down and re-constructed. The two processes of tearing down and re-constructing each building are often viewed as a single operation. However, under certain circumstances, the re-construction process, i.e., the resource recycling process, can be viewed as a separate operation. In this paper we regard these two processes as separate on the assumption that they are handled by different working crews. We formulate the problem as a resource-constrained two-machine flowshop scheduling problem with the objective of finding a feasible re-development sequence that minimizes the makespan. We provide problem formulations, discuss the complexity results, and present polynomial algorithms for various special cases of the problem. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.