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A hybrid flowshop scheduling Hybrid flowshop

scheduling
model for apparel model

manufacture
W.K. Wong and C.K. Chan 115
Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic Received April 2000
University, Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, and Revised January 2001
Accepted January 2001
W.H. Ip
Department of Manufacturing Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University, Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Keywords Scheduling, Genetic algorithms, Apparel manufacturing
Abstract A hybrid flowshop (HFS) problem on the pre-sewing operations and a master
production scheduling (MPS) problem of apparel manufacture are solved by a proposed two-tier
scheduling model. The first objective of this paper is to plan a MPS for the factory so that the costs
are minimized when the production orders are completed before and after the delivery dates
required by the customers. The second objective is to minimize the completion time of the pre-sewing
operations in the cutting department while the production quantities required by the sewing
department at several predetermined times can be fulfilled by the cutting department.
Experimentation is conducted and the results show the excellent performance of the proposed
scheduling model for the apparel industry.

1. Introduction
In many manufacturing systems, hybrid flowshops are always found. HFS
comprises series of production stages, each of which has several machines
operating in parallel. Some stages may have only one machine, but at least one
stage must have multiple machines. The flow of jobs through the production
floor is unidirectional. Each job is processed by one machine in each stage and
it must go through one or more stages. Many researches have been conducted
on the HFS scheduling problem. Hoogeveen et al. (1996) solved two identical
machines in stage 1 and only one machine at stage 2 to minimize makespan in a
NP-hard problem. Vignier (1996) proposed two heuristics in two cases to
minimize the maximum lateness in a parallel machine problem. Gupta et al.
(1997) presented a bound and bound procedure and heuristics were applied to
derive an initial upper bound. Fouad et al. (1998) solved a hybrid three-stage
flowshop problem in the woodworking industry by using dynamic
programming-based heuristic and branch and bound-based heuristic. Linn and
Zhang (1999) reviewed the current research of HFS scheduling problem from
two-stage to k-stage and discussed the future direction of research.
In the research of these production planning and scheduling problems, many
researchers have paid much attention to the earliness and tardiness production International Journal of Clothing
scheduling models and their optimization. Cleveland and Smith (1989) Science and Technology,
Vol. 13 No. 2, 2001, pp. 115-131.
investigated the use of genetic algorithms to schedule the release of jobs into a # MCB University Press, 0955-6222
IJCST manufacturing facility, called the sector release scheduling problem. Gupta et
13,2 al. (1997) applied genetic algorithms to minimize the flowtime variance of the
n-job single-machine scheduling problem. Lee and Kim (1995) minimized the
total weighted earliness and tardiness penalties from common due date by
using genetic algorithms. Chung et al. (1991) proposed pseudo-polynomial
dynamic programming algorithms to minimize weighted number of tardy jobs
116 and E/T penalties about a common due date. Shintaro et al. (1999) applied
Sahni’s algorithm to a parallel machine scheduling problem to minimize
maximum completion time and maximum lateness. Production schedule
planning in a multi-stage manufacturing operation involves making critical
decisions at different levels of management. This paper is aimed at developing
a model based on the earliness and tardiness production scheduling and hybrid
flowshops scheduling approach with genetic algorithms (GAs) to assist the
factory management and production-floors management of the apparel
manufacturing companies. The proposed approach can be used for preparation
of master production schedule (MPS) and implementation of daily production-
floor schedule.

2. Statement of the problem

In the apparel industry, master production schedules are always developed to
meet the contract delivery dates of the buyers. In many cases, the production
orders from the same buyer are grouped together on the production schedule.
Those late completed orders contribute to extra transportation costs and
reduced selling price of the garments demanded by the buyers to compensate
the late delivery.
In this paper, a model of two-tier hierarchy of garment manufacturing is
developed to assist the production manager in the planning and control of
manufacturing orders and production capacity. The top hierarchy, first,
schedules the sequence of the production orders for the whole factory based
on the minimization of the tardiness cost. Once the sequence of the
production orders is scheduled, the next hierarchy of the model will optimize
the operation of cutting and sewing operations under the constraint of
limited spreading capacity while meeting the production quantities required
by the sewing department. In the proposed model, the operations of the
cutting and sewing floors are considered as the HFS scheduling problem in
which the pre-sewing operations including spreading, cutting and the
sewing scheduling of the apparel manufacturing companies will be
integrated.
In the scheduling of production orders, the fabric lays will be maximized
under two criteria:
(1) minimum completion time of spreading and cutting operations
(2) minimum lateness of cut pieces (garments) delivered to the sewing
department.
3. Brief of genetic algorithms (GAs) Hybrid flowshop
Recently, some researchers successfully applied GAs to the planning and scheduling
scheduling problem. Lee and Choi (1995) applied GA on single-machine model
problems to produce a job sequence and then jobs were time-tabled so as to
minimize the total weighted E/T costs. Lo (1997) presented the scheduling
problem of a sewing line by using GA and a case-based reasoning approach. Li
et al. (1998) proposed a GA approach to solve the ETPSP problem with lot-size 117
consideration and multi-process capacity balancing. Wong et al. (2000a; 2000b)
developed the optimal schedule of the cutting operation in the computerized
fabric-cutting system by using genetic algorithm approach to minimize the idle
time of the cutting machine. Wong et al. (2000a; 2000b) also applied genetic
algorithms to investigate the effect of spreading-table quantities on the
spreading-table planning.
The basic concept of GAs is designed to simulate processes in a natural
system necessary for evolution, specifically those that follow the principle of
``survival of the fittest’’. GA is a search algorithm which explores a solution
space to mimic the processes in the natural evolution of a living population.
They represent an intelligent exploitation of a random search within a defined
search space to solve a problem. It has the property of implicit parallelism and
the influence of GAs is equivalent to an extensive search of hyper planes of
given space. In other words, each hyper plane value is not required to be tested
directly which differs from traditional search techniques.
Goldberg (1989) stated that GA is a class of local search meta-heuristics that
have been also proposed for combinatorial optimization problems. The concept
is to represent a feasible solution as a string of genes, i.e. chromosome, and a
population of solutions is generated. The evolution of the population is under
the operations of crossover and mutation. Crossover refers to the two solutions
merging to derive new individuals while mutation refers to a solution
perturbed by changing a gene. The operation of crossover and mutation are
conducted randomly. The survival of individual is based on the evaluation of
fitness of the objective function. Fitness is a measurement of the individual’s
suitability in the environment. A high value of fitness means that the
individual is more suitable to be selected and has a better chance to survive.
EÂlitist strategy is used to avoid loss of the best chromosomes’ genes (Man et
al., 1996). This strategy fixes the loss of the potential best member by copying
the best member of each generation into the succeeding generation.
Sometimes the best and the worst chromosomes will produce almost the
same numbers of offspring in the next population, which causes premature
convergence. In this case, the effect of natural selection is, therefore, not
obvious. A linear normalization, used by Li et al. (1998), which converts the
evaluations of chromosomes into fitness values, is used here to solve this
problem. The idea is simply to evaluate each chromosome and assign an
ordered index according to the decreasing evaluation. The evaluation value is
replaced by the fitness value for determination of the selecting parents and
IJCST individuals. The new fitness value is calculated by a constant value plus a
13,2 decrement rate.
The basic procedure of genetic algorithms is explained as follows:
Let P(g) and C(g) be parents and offspring respectively in the existing
generation g;
Procedure
118 for
g: = 0;
initialize population P(g);
evaluate P(g);
for
recombine P(g) to generate C(g);
evaluate C(g);
select P(g + 1) from P(g) and C(g);
g: = g + 1
end
end

4. Mathematical model
The notation used in the formulation is defined as follows:
¬ a unit earliness penalty;
­ a unit tardiness penalty;
dp due date of production order p;
Cp completion time of production order p;
qp number of garments of production order p;
u factory production sequence;
a extra transportation expenses by air;
s deduction of selling price;
X fabric lay;
j spreading sequence j = {1, 2, . . . J};
n cutting sequence;
l yardage of fabric lays;
L yardage of spreading tables;
Y planned number of garments required at each interval;
qx numbers of garments of fabric lay;
W daily production minutes;
R numbers of fabric lays which are planned to be setup before starting
cutting;
m machine used for spreading and cutting;
Xnm cutting sequence of particular spreading machine n = {1, 2, . . . L},
m = {1, 2, . . . M};
i idle time of cutting machines;
¯ number of interval per working day.
4.1 Earliness and lateness penalty Hybrid flowshop
In the formulation of the scheduling problem for the apparel industry, it is scheduling
assumed that all the production orders have a common due date, i.e. dp = d. In model
other words, the production orders p are needed to be delivered to the buyers at
that specified date, commonly known as contract delivery date. Cp is denoted as
the completion time of production order p. Difference of the tardiness penalties
occurs among the production orders because of different styles of production 119
orders from different customers or the same customer contributes to different
values of the garments which directly influence the penalty. In the apparel
industry, a unit earliness penalty ¬ is assumed to be the inventory cost and a
unit tardiness penalty ­ is the summation of extra transportation expenses by
air freight a and deduction of selling price s demanded by the buyers. Let Ep
and Tp represent the earliness and lateness of production order p respectively.
f(¼) is denoted as the schedule of a particular production line with the
minimization of earliness and lateness penalty cost. For the whole
manufacturing plant with several production lines (I, II, . . .), the schedules are
derived for each production line as follows:
Ep ˆ max…0; d ¡ Cp † …1†

Tp ˆ max…0; Cp ¡ d† …2†

X
R
‡
X
R
f …¼† ˆ ¬p …d ¡ Cp † ­ p …Cp ¡ d† …3†
¼2I pˆ1 pˆ1

X
R
­ p ˆ ap ˆ sp …4†
pˆ1

or
X
R
f …¼† ˆ …¬p Tp ‡ ­ p Tp †: …5†
pˆ1

4.2 Hybrid flowshop problem (n/m/F//C max) in the cutting and sewing
departments
Following the standard notation, the flowshop problem in the manufacturing
process can be specified as n/V, mv, F//Cmax where n is the cardinality of the set
of jobs J = {1, 2, . . . n} to be scheduled without pre-emption on V stages of
production process. A job consists of V stages of production process. The
processing time of job i in stage v is defined as p(v, i) ¶ 0. Stages v, v = 1, . . . V
comprises mv machines in parallel in which each machine processes only one
job at a time. ``F’’ designates that the production flow of jobs is unidirectional
IJCST from stage 1 to stage V. Each job may be processed, on one machine at any
13,2 stage. The objective is to determine the sequence of jobs so that the maximum
completion time Cmax = maxi=1, . . . n(Ci) is minimal, where Ci is the completion
time of job i. Earliest release date first (ERD) rule is applied on the fabric lay
cutting which is to minimize the variation in the waiting times of the fabric lay
on the spreading tables.
120 In the proposed model of the cutting department, there are two stages
involved in the hybrid flow shop. This two-stage hybrid flow shop involves
various spreading machines at stage 1 and various cutting machine at stage 2
(m1 > 1, m2 > 1). Capacity planning is an important consideration in our model
which enables the optimal utilization of the capital intensive spreading and
cutting equipment of modern apparel manufacturing processes.
Figure 1 shows a schematic of the spreading, cutting and sewing process of
an apparel manufacturing company.
In order to ensure that the cutting machine has enough fabric lays to cut at
the starting period of production or no occurrence of idle time on cutting
machine, a small number of fabric lays have been spread before the cutting
machine starts operation. Thus:
X
R
i…Xn † µ 0 …6†
nˆ1

The objective function to minimize the completion time of spreading and

cutting is:
X
N
min f …¼† ˆ i…Xn † …7†
¼2I
nˆ1

Figure 1.
Schematic of the
spreading, cutting and
sewing process of an
apparel manufacturing
company
 X
N X
N X
M X
N Hybrid flowshop
i…Xn † ˆ S…Xnm † ¡ C…Xn¡1 † …8† scheduling
nˆ1 nˆ1 mˆ1 nˆ1
model
The negative value of i(Xn) will be converted into zero once:
X X
S…Xnm † < C…Xn¡1 †
121
if
X X
S…Xnm † ¡ C…Xn¡1 † < 0; i…Xn † ˆ 0:

4.2.1 Constraint of required number of garments. It is assumed that the number

of garments of the fabric lays which are processed between the time interval
must meet the planned number of garments required at that interval. Hence we
have when:
X
N
C…Xn † ¶ W =¯ …9†
nˆ1

X
N
qx …Xn † ¶ Y : …10†
nˆ1

4.2.2 Constraint of spreading capacity. On each spreading table, there is a limit

of spreading length. Hence, the sum of the spreading length of jobs which have
been set up must be smaller than or equal to the spreading length of the
spreading table. We have another constraint:
J X
X M N X
X M
l…Xjm † ¡ l…Xnm † µ L: …11†
jˆ1 mˆ1 nˆ1 mˆ1

4.2.3 Constraint of cutting sequence. As there are two cutting machines (m 2 > 1)
in the model, any of the cutting machines will only cut the fabric lay Xn
provided by the spreading machine m which must be at least greater than the
fabric lay Xn±1 prepared by spreading machine m ± 1. For example, if cutting
machine m7 is now cutting fabric lay Xn prepared by spreading machine m ± 2,
the cutting machine m8 can only cut that fabric lay Xn±1 which is prepared by
any spreading machine from machine m3 to machine m6.
mXn ¶ mXn¡1 : …12†

The core of the configuration lies on two GA-based schedulers which search a
valid master production schedule (MPS) during a production period, and the
spreading and cutting schedule (SCS) of the whole production day (see
Figure 2). The order master file (OMF) stores the information of each
IJCST
13,2

122

Figure 2.
Configuration of an E/T
and hybrid flowshop
scheduling system for
the pre-sewing stage of
apparel industry

production, i.e. number of garments per order, standard allowed minutes (SAM)
per garment, due date, and supplies this information to the GA-based MPS
scheduler. The scheduler will search the optimal production schedule with the
lowest earliness and lateness penalty costs.
In case of more than one solution with the same penalty cost or zero penalty
cost, the scheduler will choose the one with the lowest value of changeover due to
different styles of production order. For each production, a value g {g = 1 . . . G}
representing the corresponding style is assigned to each production order. From
the production management point of view, the plant is more productive for the
production operatives to work when similar styles of different production orders
can be grouped together. The optimal schedule with the lowest value of style
changeover ! can be obtained as follows:
X
G
min f …¼† pg! …13†
¼2I gˆ1

where
p! ˆ pug ¡ p…u¡1†g :

A spread and cut time database (SCTD) is constructed to provide the spread and
cut time of each fabric lay to the GA-based SCS scheduler to search the optimal
schedule based on the created MPS. The spread and cut time of each fabric lay is
based on the numbers of garments drawn on the maker, the number of fabric
plies spread, the perimeters of patterns of the garments, the speed of spreading
machines and the speed of the cutting knife.
 The quantities of cut pieces required by the sewing department can be Hybrid flowshop
fulfilled and the overall E/T penalty costs and makespan of the production scheduling
orders can be minimized ultimately. model
5. Case studies
5.1 E/T problem on the 1st tier of the proposed scheduling system
In the apparel industry, production planners often develop the MPS to meet the 123
delivery dates required by the customers. No systematic methods on the
production planning and scheduling are used. Mostly, they simply arrange the
production orders based on the priority of delivery date required by the
customers without the consideration of minimization of costs involved. Very
often, the inventory cost involved when those orders are completed earlier than
the delivery dates is not accounted for. On the other hand, for some orders
which cannot be delivered on time, they need to be delivered to the customers
by air which contributes extra costs, instead of by ship. In some cases, the
manufacturers even are forced by the customers to reduce the selling price of
the products so as to compensate the late delivery. These ultimately lead to
reduced profit and loss of reputation of the apparel manufacturers.
Recently, planning and scheduling problems with earliness and tardiness
(E/T) penalties have drawn much attention among researchers. This approach
can be used to develop an effective MPS for production scheduling. The
objective function of the earliness and tardiness production scheduling and
planning (ETPSP) problem mostly integrates with the JIT philosophy. In a JIT
scheduling environment, jobs that complete early must be held in finished
goods inventory until their delivery date, while jobs that complete after their
due dates may cause a customer to incur penalty costs. Therefore, an ideal
schedule is one in which all jobs finish exactly on the assigned due dates.
The following is the background of the case study in which all the data were
captured from a Hong-Kong-based garment manufacturing company in China
which produces men’s shirts:
. The production lead time is five days.
.
The production line works for eight hours daily.
. The production line is formed with 50 workers which contributes to
24,000 working minutes/day at 100 per cent efficiency.
. Ten production orders are available for processing at date zero.
. The number of days available from start production date to due date is
58; all the production orders need to be delivered to the buyers on the
58th day.
. Production order 5 and 6 are placed by buyer E while production order 8
and 9 are placed by buyer G.
The details of the production orders of a Hong Kong-based garment
manufacturing company are described in Table I.
IJCST Number of Standard
13,2 Production garments/ allowed Earliness Tardiness
order order minutes/ Due date penalty unit penalty unit
p Buyer qp garment dp ¬ ­

1 A 5,136 16.9 58th 0.7 1.0

2 B 7,320 14.8 58th 0.8 1.2
124 3 C 8,508 16.7 58th 0.6 0.9
4 D 1,164 17.4 58th 0.8 1.2
5 E 3,588 16.5 58th 0.7 1.0
6 E 2,182 16.5 58th 0.7 1.0
7 F 6,444 15.3 58th 0.8 1.2
Table I. 8 G 4,440 14.9 58th 0.9 1.3
Details of the 9 G 4,608 14.9 58th 0.6 0.8
production orders 10 H 2,356 17.4 58th 0.9 1.3

Table II shows the results of the schedules on the 1st tier of the scheduling
system by using different numbers of populations setting in GA-based MPS
scheduler. In the genetic procedure, the population size influences both the
ultimate performance and efficiency of GAs. A large population is likely to
contain representatives from a large number of hyper planes which
discourages premature convergence to sub-optimal solutions. On the other
hand, it requires more fitness evaluations of each generation which causes an
unacceptable slow rate of convergence.
In the experiment, different numbers of population were set in the
scheduling system. Figures 3-8 indicate the trend of GA performance at
different numbers of population. In Figure 3, though convergence could be
achieved at the 6th generation with the five population setting first, the penalty
cost was $70,073 which was not the minimum cost since after trying the ten
population setting, the penalty cost could be reduced to $65,151 at the 114th
generation, as shown in Figure 4. The penalty costs $65,115 and 64,592 were
obtained at the 20 and 30 population settings in Figures 5 and 6 respectively.
Figure 7 illustrates that at 40 populations with 200 generations, convergence
could occur in which the optimal schedule is 4 8 5 3 6 7 2 1 with minimal
penalty cost $64,422 as even at the 80 population setting of Figure 8, the
penalty cost was still achieved at $64,422.

Population Schedule Penalty cost

5 10 4 7 2 3 8 9 5 6 1 70,073
10 4 10 1 5 6 3 8 9 7 2 65,151
Table II. 20 4 1 5 6 3 2 8 9 7 10 65,115
Schedules generated on 30 4 10 1 5 6 3 8 9 2 7 64,592
the 1st tier of the 40 4 10 5 6 3 7 8 9 2 1 64,422
scheduling system 80 4 10 5 6 3 7 8 9 2 1 64,422
 Hybrid flowshop
scheduling
model

125

Figure 3.
Performance with five
populations

Figure 4.
Performance with ten
populations

5.2 HFS problem on the 2nd tier of the proposed scheduling system
The background of the HFS problem can be described as follows:
. A set of n independent, single-operation fabric lay is available for
processing at time zero.
. Spreading times for fabric lays are independent of spreading sequence
and can be included in processing times.
. There are no machine breakdowns.
IJCST
13,2

126

Figure 5.
Performance with 20
populations

Figure 6.
Performance with 30
populations

. Spreading time and cutting time per fabric lay is deterministic and
known.
. Transportation time of fabric lays between spreading table and cutting
machine is negligible.
. Fabric lays are known in advance.
. One machine is continuously available and is never kept idle while work
is waiting.
. No fabric lay pre-empt is permitted.
 Hybrid flowshop
scheduling
model

127

Figure 7.
Performance with 40
populations

Figure 8.
Performance with 80
populations

Table III shows the spreading sequence of the spreading machine m1, m2, m3,
m4, m5 and m6 and the cutting sequence of fabric lays of the two computerized
cutting machines m7 and m8 generated on the 2nd tier of the scheduling
system. The details of each fabric lay are described in Table IV.
After 250 generations with 80 populations, convergence occurred and the
completion time of the operations in the cutting department was 703 minutes,
while the production quantities required by the sewing department at a
predetermined time could be reached.
IJCST m7 with m8 with
13,2 m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 m6 idle time idle time

15 42 9 80 84 61 15(0) 80(0)
25 31 37 96 92 58 9(0) 61(0)
43 26 45 70 86 98 42(0) 84(0)
56 8 47 101 74 60 37(0) 96(0)
128 7 55 20 75 81 99 45(0) 70(0)
22 30 50 82 62 63 47(0) 92(0)
27 34 32 87 68 67 31(5) 58(0)
4 17 5 78 59 94 26(2) 86(0)
14 38 24 90 83 71 25(0) 101(0)
6 54 18 85 102 72 8(0) 74(0)
13 16 1 79 88 76 43(0) 75(0)
21 51 10 66 91 65 56(0) 98(0)
33 44 29 93 64 69 20(0) 60(11)
19 12 41 100 95 55(0) 81(0)
2 49 28 73 97 7(0) 82(0)
11 3 36 77 30(0) 62(0)
35 39 48 89 34(0) 99(0)
46 23 57 50(0) 63(0)
52 53 17(0) 87(0)
40 22(0) 68(0)
32(0) 59(0)
5(0) 67(0)
24(0) 78(0)
38(0) 83(0)
18(0) 90(0)
27(0) 94(0)
4(0) 85(0)
14(0) 71(0)
54(0) 102(0)
6(0) 88(0)
1(0) 79(0)
10(0) 91(0)
16(0) 72(0)
29(0) 66(0)
51(0) 64(0)
13(0) 76(0)
44(0) 65(0)
12(0) 95(0)
49(0) 97(0)
41(0) 93(0)
21(0) 100(0)
28(0) 69(0)
3(0) 73(0)
39(0) 77(0)
36(0) 89(0)
48(0)
33(0)
23(0)
57(0)
19(0)
52(0)
53(0)
2(0)
Table III. 11(0)
Spreading and cutting 35(0)
sequence of cutting 46(0)
department 45(0)
X SS…X † P…X † G…X † S…X † C…X † X SS…X † P…X† G…X† S…X † C…X † Hybrid flowshop
scheduling
1 1 21 21 9 6 52 2 128 256 54 10 model
2 1 18 18 8 6 53 2 131 262 55 10
3 1 18 18 8 6 54 4 88 352 54 19
4 2 11 22 7 9 55 2 38 76 19 10
5 1 6 6 5 6 56 2 50 100 23 10
6 3 96 288 53 15 57 4 149 596 92 19 129
7 2 36 72 14 10 58 4 199 796 80 19
8 2 36 72 14 10 59 4 112 448 47 19
9 2 62 124 25 10 60 4 196 784 79 19
10 2 23 46 10 10 61 4 103 412 42 19
11 2 25 50 11 10 62 4 102 408 42 19
12 2 21 42 10 10 63 4 147 588 59 19
13 2 110 220 47 10 64 4 130 520 54 19
14 2 128 256 52 10 65 4 129 516 52 19
15 2 92 184 38 10 66 4 170 680 70 19
16 2 56 112 24 10 67 4 170 680 70 19
17 4 140 560 82 19 68 4 119 476 49 19
18 4 156 624 91 19 69 4 118 472 49 19
19 4 157 628 92 19 70 4 99 396 41 19
20 4 157 628 92 19 71 4 183 732 73 19
21 4 155 620 91 19 72 4 186 744 76 19
22 4 139 556 81 19 73 4 172 688 70 19
23 4 156 624 91 19 74 4 146 584 59 19
24 2 56 112 25 9 75 4 163 652 65 19
25 4 156 624 104 18 76 2 64 128 18 10
26 2 45 90 21 9 77 2 142 284 39 10
27 2 24 48 11 9 78 4 151 604 62 19
28 2 70 140 33 9 79 4 182 728 73 19
29 4 139 556 81 19 80 4 151 604 62 19
30 1 5 5 5 6 81 4 174 696 71 19
31 4 140 560 82 19 82 4 145 580 58 19
32 3 53 159 30 15 83 2 151 302 43 10
33 2 2 4 4 9 84 2 150 300 43 10
34 3 8 24 6 15 85 2 151 302 43 10
35 2 1 2 4 9 86 4 158 632 64 19
36 2 44 88 20 10 87 4 196 784 79 19
37 2 26 52 11 10 88 4 196 784 79 19
38 3 86 258 49 15 89 3 9 27 5 15
39 2 70 140 33 9 90 3 7 21 4 15
40 4 125 500 73 19 91 2 9 18 4 9
41 2 22 44 11 9 92 1 5 5 3 6
42 1 5 5 5 6 93 2 10 20 5 9
43 2 21 42 11 9 94 2 41 82 19 10
44 2 10 20 7 9 95 1 20 20 8 7
45 3 61 183 38 15 96 1 12 12 6 7
46 3 62 186 38 15 97 2 106 212 42 10
47 2 22 44 11 9 98 3 60 180 33 15
48 2 26 52 12 10 99 2 46 92 21 10
49 3 99 297 57 15 100 2 86 172 36 10
50 2 19 38 9 10 101 2 74 148 32 10
51 2 28 56 12 10 102 3 21 63 11 15
Notes: X = job; SS…X † = number of garments being drawn on the marker; Table IV.
P…X † = number of fabric plies; S…X † = total spreading time of fabric lay; Characteristics of fabric
C…X † = cutting time of fabric lay lays
IJCST The total operation time of cutting machine m7 was 688 minutes in which five
13,2 and two minute idle times occured on job 31 and 26 respectively. The total
operation time of cutting machine m8 was 703 minutes with 11 minutes idle
time occurring on job 60. Thus the completion time of operations of the cutting
department was 703 minutes since the longer operation time of the cutting
machine, i.e. cutting machine m8, was counted as the two computerized cutting
130 machines were operated simultaneously.
Table V shows the planned quantities of garments required by the sewing
department at four predetermined times:
(1) 175 minutes;
(2) 350 minutes;
(3) 525 minutes; and
(4) 700 minutes.
Table V also shows the quantities of garments generated by the SCS
scheduling system in which the quantities of garments required by the sewing
department could be fulfilled by the cutting department.

6. Conclusion
This paper has addressed the integration of a real hybrid flowshop and
earliness and tardiness scheduling problem in the apparel industry. In this
paper, a new model of two-tier hierarchy of garment manufacturing
scheduling system has been designed. This new theoretical framework solves
the master production schedule and spreading and cutting schedule. The
traditional production planning and scheduling method has been changed
significantly. We have considered the constraint of required numbers of
garments, spreading capacity and cutting sequence within the hybrid
flowshop setup of the cutting department. By using the proposed heuristics,
the experimental results indicate that the MPS with minimized earliness and
tardiness penalties can be prepared and completion time of operations in the
cutting department and lateness of garments delivered to the sewing
department can be minimized in the apparel industry. The research here can
be extended to the scheduling of the operations in fusing, pressing and other
departments of apparel manufacture.

Number of Number of Number of Total number of

Table V. Time garments required garments provided garments provided garments provided
Comparison between (start at by the sewing by the cutting by the cutting by the cutting
quantities of garment 0 min) department machine m7 machine m8 department
required by the sewing
department and 175 mins 7,500 2,861 4,721 7,582
quantities of garment 350 mins 8,000 3,015 5,536 8,551
generated by GA-based 525 mins 7,000 2,708 4,380 7,088
SCS scheduler 700 mins 6,500 2,861 3,739 6,600
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