When regarding flowshop
problems with sequence-dependent batch set-up times and makespan criterion, some
known results are those of Vakharia et al. (1995) and Schaller et al. (1997) who
presented branch-and-bound approaches as well as several heuristics. Moreover,
note that in some cases, parallel set-ups may be possible. As Stafford and Tseng
(1990) described, if job i’s predecessor in the sequence has completed its processing
on machine r, then the operator of this machine should begin the set-up for job i in
anticipation that job i will be the next job to arrive for processing at that machine