Permutation flow shop scheduling with delay time under time-of-use electricity tariffs

Worldwide energy crisis and global economic depression make reducing electricity costs has become a focus for many factory managers. This paper set up a Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling (PFSS) model with delay time, which means adding delay time between different jobs to make processing period more flexible. Considering the time of use (TOU) electricity tariff, the PFSS model using the TOU electricity tariffs is established. Meanwhile, the shutdown state is introduced for the proposed model to improve the performance. The proposed PFSS model is solved by genetic algorithm with constructing the new chromosome coding. The experiment demonstrates the new PFSS model can reduce electricity cost by 16.83% and realize the purpose to save electricity cost for factories.