Three-stage ordered flow shops with either synchronous flow, blocking or no-idle machines (Q2305020)

Different versions of ordered flow-shop scheduling problems with three machines are studied. It is assumed that the machines are ordered, i.e., if for a pair \(i,j\) the processing time of \(i\) is smaller than that of \(j\) on one machine, then it is also smaller on each other machine. It is shown that sequencing the jobs in SPT order (shortest processing time first) leads to an optimal schedule for synchronous, blocking and no-idle flow shops. Afterwards, special cases are studied where the second machine is dominant (i.e., has the largest processing times).