Flow shop scheduling problems, are a class of scheduling problems with a workshop or group shop in which the flow control shall enable an appropriate sequencing for each job and for processing on a set of machines or with other resources 1,2,...,m in compliance with given processing orders. Especially the maintaining of a continuous flow of processing tasks is desired with a minimum of idle time and a minimum of waiting time. Flow shop scheduling is a special case of job shop scheduling where there is strict order of all operations to be performed on all jobs. Flow shop scheduling may apply as well to production facilities as to computing designs.
A special type of flow shop scheduling problem is the permutation flow shop scheduling problem in which the processing order of the jobs on the resources is the same for each subsequent step of processing.