OPTIMIZED SCHEDULING FOR THREE-STAGE FLOW SHOP WITH PARALLEL MACHINES: APPLICATION IN WASTE MANAGEMENT AND RECYCLING FACILITIES

Scheduling is one of the most important aspects of manufacturing sectors. Various factors in terms of performance evaluation, make business more competitive. Scheduling is the process of allocating scarce resources to tasks throughout time in order to accomplish one or more optimization goals. In fact, the methodical process of organizing, managing and maximizing work while ensuring the greatest possible use of both time and resources is the main aim of scheduling. This paper indicates the desirable and necessary steps to discover the optimum solution by efficient scheduling in waste recycling facilities which is essential for optimizing resources utilization and reducing operational delay. In this study, we have taken three stage flow shop scheduling with multiple machines at first two stages and single machine at last stage. This type of model has a number of applications not only in several industries but also in saving natural resources like water, electricity and reducing waste, idle time and unnecessary energy consumption. As, this research specially focused on the scenario of waste management and recycling facility where incoming waste undergoes three primary stages sorting, cleaning, and recycling. Here the scheduling evaluation is done by comparing the Branch and Bound method with Palmer’s and Dannenbring method to determine an optimal job sequence that minimize the total processing time. The processing time is represented as a trapezoidal fuzzy number making an impact. The goal of this activity is to determine the optimal job plan in order to reduce the total amount of time that has processed and allocate the lead in the best feasible way to reduce the machine idle time, minimizes the water usage and energy consumption. This comparison demonstrated how well our suggested approach handled this challenging scheduling issue the findings contribute to the efficient management of recycling facilities, ensuring improved throughput. Because better scheduling strategies must be implemented in order to the growing demand for waste processing and recycling. So, the proposed approach aids in streamlining waste management processes, ultimately supporting environmental conservation efforts. Here, Branch and Bound is the best approach as compared to Palmer and Dannenbring approach. Future work can be extending this methodology to the three-phase flow shop scheduling with parallel machines at all the stages.