Modelling and solving a practical flexible job-shop scheduling problem with blocking constraints

Abstract This paper aims at presenting the study of a practical job-shop scheduling problem we modelled and solved when helping a company to design a new production workshop. The main characteristics of the problem are that some resources are flexible, and blocking constraints have to be taken into account. The problem and the motivations for solving it are detailed. The modelling of the problem and the proposed resolution approach, a genetic algorithm, are described. Numerical experiments on real data are presented and analysed. We also show how these results were used to support choices in the design of the workshop.