Minimizing The Number of Tardy Jobs in Hybrid Flow Shops with Non-Identical Multiple Processors

Two-stage hybrid flow shops (a.k.a., flow shops with multiple processors (FSMPs)) are studied wherein the multiple processors at a stage are non-identical, but related (a.k.a., uniform) in their processing speeds.   The impact of ten different dispatching procedures on a due-date based criterion (specifically, the number of tardy jobs) is analyzed over a set of 1,800 problems of varying configurations wherein the number of jobs per problem is between 20 and 100 and their due dates are randomly assigned.  Results indicate that the modified due date (MDD), earliest due date (EDD), slack (SLK), shortest processing time (SPT), and least work remaining (LWR) rules are statistically inseparable but yield superior performance to the other rules included in this study.  The longest processing time (LPT) and most work remaining (MWR) rules provide the poorest performance.