The blocking flow shop scheduling problem: A comprehensive and conceptual review

This paper presents a literature review on the m-machine flow shop scheduling problem with blocking conditions. In total, 139 papers are reviewed and classified, ranging from 1969 up to early 2019. Results showed that makespan was the objective function most adopted by the researchers, with 62% of the total covered, followed by multi-objective based (12%), total flow time-based (11%), due date-based (7%), stochastic based functions (6%) and cycle time (3%). Regarding the purpose of the paper, approximately 92% of the papers proposed solution methods, where 76% of the papers developed heuristic methods and 16% of exact methods, and 8% of the papers considered the analysis of the problem and literature reviews. Directions for future researches include the proposition of solution methods for mono-objective functions as total flow time-based and due date-based, development of solution methods for the m-machine flow shop with RCb and RCb* constraints and adoption of more than one additional constraint to the problem. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.