Makespan computation for cyber manufacturing centre using bottleneck analysis: A re-entrant flow shop problem

This paper presents the development of an alternative method for makespan computation algorithms of a re-entrant flow shop scheduling problem using bottleneck analysis. The computation is specifically intended for the cyber manufacturing centre (CMC) which is an Internet based collaborative design and manufacturing services at Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia. The CMC processes scheduling resembles a four machine permutation re-entrant flow shop with the process routing of M1,M2,M3,M4,M3,M4. It was shown that under the sequence dependent bottleneck characteristics, the makespan can be accurately determined by the algorithm developed using bottleneck analysis. In cases where the bottleneck limitation is violated, the makespan can still be accurately determined by the introduction of bottleneck correction factor.