SCHEDULING FLEXIBLE JOB-SHOPS:: A WORST CASE ANALYSIS AND AN EVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHM.

In this paper, we deal with the flexible job shop scheduling problem. We propose an efficient heuristic method for solving the assignment problem. Indeed, we propose a worst case analysis to evaluate the performance of such a heuristic. The second specificity of the problem studied is the sequencing property. Our approach consists in the application of an evolutionary algorithm based on a set of adapted operators to solve the sequencing step. Some lower bounds for the problem (previously proposed in Ref. 1) will be used in order to evaluate the quality of our method and the solutions according to the different criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]