A nested iterated local search algorithm for scheduling a flowline manufacturing cell with sequence dependent family setup times

This paper addresses the permutation flowline manufacturing cell with sequence dependent family setup times problem with the objective to minimize the makespan criterion. We propose a new way of hybridizing iterated local search. It consists in using Branch and Bound algorithm as the embedded local search algorithm inside an iterated local search algorithm. Moreover, the application of the branch and bound algorithm is based upon the decomposition of the problem into subproblems. The performance of the proposed method is tested by numerical experiments on a large number of representative problems.