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Abstract

Highly customized requirements in smart manufacturing result in the unavoidable manual execution of complex operational procedures. Physical and mental fatigue from long work periods for assembly-line operators induces production issues, such as defective work-in-processes or equipment failure. An effective production schedule should account for worker fatigue. This study investigates a three-machine flowshop scheduling problem with the objective of makespan minimization, in which a linear fatigue effect function provides an approximate mathematical representation of fatigue and recovery processes in workers. A mixed integer programming (MIP) model is developed to optimize the integration of automated and human-operated production in manufacturing systems. Given its NP-hardness, an improved tabu search (ITS) algorithm is designed to obtain high-quality solutions, incorporating multiple initial solutions, a well-designed encoding-decoding strategy, and a tabu-based adaptive search mechanism to enhance efficiency. Numerical simulations indicate the veracity of the MIP model and the effectiveness of the ITS algorithm.

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1009240
Business indexing term
Title
A Three-Machine Flowshop Scheduling Problem with Linear Fatigue Effect
Author
Xu, Weiping 1 ; Sun Zehou 1 ; Ai Xiaotian 2 ; Zhao Baoyun 3 ; Lu, Jingyi 3 ; Zhou Hanyu 3 ; Mao Xinqi 3 ; Wen Xiaoling 4 ; Chin-Chia, Wu 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Liu, Shufeng 6 

 School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430074, China 
 Shenyang Aircraft Design and Research Institute, Shenyang 110854, China, Software College, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China 
 Software College, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China 
 Shenyang Aircraft Design and Research Institute, Shenyang 110854, China 
 Department of Statistics, Feng Chia University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan; [email protected] 
 Guobiao (Beijing) Testing & Certification Co., Ltd., Beijing 101407, China 
Publication title
Volume
13
Issue
22
First page
3670
Number of pages
27
Publication year
2025
Publication date
2025
Publisher
MDPI AG
Place of publication
Basel
Country of publication
Switzerland
Publication subject
e-ISSN
22277390
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
Document type
Journal Article
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2025-11-16
Milestone dates
2025-10-22 (Received); 2025-11-14 (Accepted)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
16 Nov 2025
ProQuest document ID
3275541940
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/three-machine-flowshop-scheduling-problem-with/docview/3275541940/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2025-11-26
Database
ProQuest One Academic