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Cover Letter Distributed No-Wait Flow Shop JMS

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Hugo Miyata
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36 views

Cover Letter Distributed No-Wait Flow Shop JMS

Uploaded by

Hugo Miyata
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Production Engineering Department

School of Engineering of São Carlos - University of São Paulo

April 17th, 2021

Professor Dr. Professor L. Wang


Journal of Manufacturing Systems

Dear Editor-in-Chief,

Please find enclosed our manuscript entitled “An iterated greedy algorithm for distributed no-
wait flow shop with setup times and preventive maintenance operations to minimize makespan”.
We would like to submit this manuscript in order to have it considered for publication in Journal
of Manufacturing Systems.
Our motivation to submit this manuscript specifically to Journal of Manufacturing Systems was
because this journal has published some of the most significant empirical evidence regarding
some of the core subjects analyzed in this research. Thus, we believe our manuscript would
appeal to the readership of this journal, also being in accordance with the journal’s scope.
The authors have approved the manuscript and agree with its submission. We also
confirm that this manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration by
another journal. The main questions about the manuscript are answered as follows.

(1) Main contribution to the field


In this paper we introduce the distributed no-wait flow shop with sequence dependent
setup times and preventive maintenance operations based on levels to minimize makespan, a
new problem not yet studied. With the aim to solve the problem, we propose a mixed integer
linear programming (MILP) and a new iterated greedy algorithm (IG). Heuristic procedures are
proposed to determine the number of PM activities for a given sequence and to replace PM
activities to job scheduling in order to minimize makespan. Extensive computational
experiments and statistical tests were conducted to evaluate the proposed IG against MILP and
two most recent heuristics of distributed flow shop scheduling problems: Hybrid enhanced fruit
fly optmization (HFFO) by Shao et al. (2020) and one stage iterated greedy by Ruiz et al.
(2019). Experimental results show that the proposed IG outperformed other methods regarding
the trade-off between quality of solution and computational time. Additionally, statistical tests
were applied to the experimental results, demonstrating significant differences between the
proposed IG and the other evaluated methods. As directions for future research, new solution
methods as well as the study of the same problem with other objective-functions are interesting
fields of study.

(2) Novelty
For the best of authors knowledge, this paper is the first study to address the distributed
no-wait flow shop with sequence dependent setup times and preventive maintenance operations
with makespan minimization. Moreover, the novelty of this paper also includes the proposition
of new iterated greedy to solve small and large instance problems as well as the development of
a new MILP to mathematically describe the problem. This paper might assist other researchers
to develop further opportunities regarding its applications and refinements.

(3) Industrial applications and audience/user


The paper has industrial applications for practitioners who want to improve their
understanding of distributed scheduling problem and for managers that would like to foster new
scheduling techniques as a manner to improve performance of their operations. The distributed
no-wait flow shop scheduling problem with sequence dependent setup times and preventive
maintenance operations can be found in several manufacturing scenarios as iron and steel
industries, pharmaceutical and food industries, robotic cells, among other. Therefore,
comprehending problems that might assist companies in optimizing their processes is
fundamental to place them ahead in competitiveness. In terms of research, this study may start a
new field of scheduling problem, in which new solutions methods, procedures to integrate PM
operations and jobs scheduling and the consideration of other objective functions could be
developed.

Please address all correspondence to:


Marcelo Seido Nagano
School of Engineering of São Carlos - University of São Paulo, Brazil
Av. Trabalhador Sãocarlense, 400 - Centro
Zip Code: 13566-590
São Carlos – SP - Brazil
Phone: +55 16 3373-9428
Phone/Fax: +55 16 3373-9425
Email: [email protected], [email protected]

We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience and we will be pleased to
answer any further questions. Thank you in advance for your attention.
Best regards,

Hugo Hissashi Miyata and Marcelo Seido Nagano

References

Ruiz, R., Pan, Q.-K., & Naderi, B. (2019). Iterated Greedy methods for the distributed
permutation flowshop scheduling problem. OMEGA-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF
MANAGEMENT SCIENCE, 83, 213–222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2018.03.004

Shao, Z., Pi, D., & Shao, W. (2020). Hybrid enhanced discrete fruit fly optimization algorithm
for scheduling blocking flow-shop in distributed environment. EXPERT SYSTEMS WITH
APPLICATIONS, 145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2019.113147

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