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A hybrid flowshop scheduling model for apparel manufacture

W.K. Wong and C.K. Chan
Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, and

Hybrid flowshop scheduling model 115

Received April 2000 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 scheduling models and their optimization. Cleveland and Smith (1989) investigated the use of genetic algorithms to schedule the release of jobs into a

International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, Vol. 13 No. 2, 2001, pp. 115-131. # MCB University Press, 0955-6222

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manufacturing facility, called the sector release scheduling problem. Gupta et 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 and E/T penalties about a common due date. Shintaro et al. (1999) applied Sahnis 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 productionfloor 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 117 et al. (1998) proposed a GA approach to solve the ETPSP problem with lot-size 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 individuals 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. Elitist 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

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individuals. The new fitness value is calculated by a constant value plus a 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 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 119 occurs among the production orders because of different styles of production 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() 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 max0; d Cp Tp max0; Cp d f
2I R X p1

1 2 3

p d Cp
R X p1

R X p1

p Cp d

p ap sp

or f
R X p1

p Tp p Tp :

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

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from stage 1 to stage V. Each job may be processed, on one machine at any 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. 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:
R X n1

iXn 0

The objective function to minimize the completion time of spreading and cutting is: min f
2I N X n1

iXn

Figure 1. Schematic of the spreading, cutting and sewing process of an apparel manufacturing company

N X n1

iXn

N M XX

n1 m1

SXnm

N X n1

CXn1

Hybrid flowshop scheduling model 121

The negative value of i(Xn) will be converted into zero once: X X SXnm < CXn1 if X SXnm X CXn1 < 0; iXn 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:
N X n1

CXn W =

N X n1

qx Xn Y :

10

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 M XX j1 m1

lXjm

N M XX n1 m1

lXnm L:

11

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 Xn1 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 Xn1 which is prepared by any spreading machine from machine m3 to machine m6. mXn mXn1 : 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

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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: min f
2I G X g1

pg!

13

where p! pug pu1g : 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 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 mens shirts:
. . .

123

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.

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Production order p 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Buyer A B C D E E F G G H

Number of garments/ order qp 5,136 7,320 8,508 1,164 3,588 2,182 6,444 4,440 4,608 2,356

Standard allowed minutes/ garment 16.9 14.8 16.7 17.4 16.5 16.5 15.3 14.9 14.9 17.4

Due date dp 58th 58th 58th 58th 58th 58th 58th 58th 58th 58th

Earliness Tardiness penalty unit penalty unit 0.7 0.8 0.6 0.8 0.7 0.7 0.8 0.9 0.6 0.9 1.0 1.2 0.9 1.2 1.0 1.0 1.2 1.3 0.8 1.3

124

Table I. Details of the production orders

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

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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.

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m1 15 25 43 56 7 22 27 4 14 6 13 21 33 19 2 11 35 46

m2 42 31 26 8 55 30 34 17 38 54 16 51 44 12 49 3 39 23 52 40

m3 9 37 45 47 20 50 32 5 24 18 1 10 29 41 28 36 48 57 53

m4 80 96 70 101 75 82 87 78 90 85 79 66 93 100 73

m5 84 92 86 74 81 62 68 59 83 102 88 91 64 95 97 77 89

m6 61 58 98 60 99 63 67 94 71 72 76 65 69

m7 with idle time 15(0) 9(0) 42(0) 37(0) 45(0) 47(0) 31(5) 26(2) 25(0) 8(0) 43(0) 56(0) 20(0) 55(0) 7(0) 30(0) 34(0) 50(0) 17(0) 22(0) 32(0) 5(0) 24(0) 38(0) 18(0) 27(0) 4(0) 14(0) 54(0) 6(0) 1(0) 10(0) 16(0) 29(0) 51(0) 13(0) 44(0) 12(0) 49(0) 41(0) 21(0) 28(0) 3(0) 39(0) 36(0) 48(0) 33(0) 23(0) 57(0) 19(0) 52(0) 53(0) 2(0) 11(0) 35(0) 46(0) 45(0)

m8 with idle time 80(0) 61(0) 84(0) 96(0) 70(0) 92(0) 58(0) 86(0) 101(0) 74(0) 75(0) 98(0) 60(11) 81(0) 82(0) 62(0) 99(0) 63(0) 87(0) 68(0) 59(0) 67(0) 78(0) 83(0) 90(0) 94(0) 85(0) 71(0) 102(0) 88(0) 79(0) 91(0) 72(0) 66(0) 64(0) 76(0) 65(0) 95(0) 97(0) 93(0) 100(0) 69(0) 73(0) 77(0) 89(0)

128

Table III. Spreading and cutting sequence of cutting department

X 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

SSX 1 1 1 2 1 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 4 2 2 2 4 1 4 3 2 3 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 1 2 2 3 3 2 2 3 2 2

PX 21 18 18 11 6 96 36 36 62 23 25 21 110 128 92 56 140 156 157 157 155 139 156 56 156 45 24 70 139 5 140 53 2 8 1 44 26 86 70 125 22 5 21 10 61 62 22 26 99 19 28

GX SX CX 21 18 18 22 6 288 72 72 124 46 50 42 220 256 184 112 560 624 628 628 620 556 624 112 624 90 48 140 556 5 560 159 4 24 2 88 52 258 140 500 44 5 42 20 183 186 44 52 297 38 56 9 8 8 7 5 53 14 14 25 10 11 10 47 52 38 24 82 91 92 92 91 81 91 25 104 21 11 33 81 5 82 30 4 6 4 20 11 49 33 73 11 5 11 7 38 38 11 12 57 9 12 6 6 6 9 6 15 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 9 18 9 9 9 19 6 19 15 9 15 9 10 10 15 9 19 9 6 9 9 15 15 9 10 15 10 10

X 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

SSX PX GX SX CX 2 2 4 2 2 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 2 4 4 4 4 4 2 2 2 4 4 4 3 3 2 1 2 2 1 1 2 3 2 2 2 3 128 131 88 38 50 149 199 112 196 103 102 147 130 129 170 170 119 118 99 183 186 172 146 163 64 142 151 182 151 174 145 151 150 151 158 196 196 9 7 9 5 10 41 20 12 106 60 46 86 74 21 256 262 352 76 100 596 796 448 784 412 408 588 520 516 680 680 476 472 396 732 744 688 584 652 128 284 604 728 604 696 580 302 300 302 632 784 784 27 21 18 5 20 82 20 12 212 180 92 172 148 63 54 55 54 19 23 92 80 47 79 42 42 59 54 52 70 70 49 49 41 73 76 70 59 65 18 39 62 73 62 71 58 43 43 43 64 79 79 5 4 4 3 5 19 8 6 42 33 21 36 32 11 10 10 19 10 10 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 10 10 19 19 19 19 19 10 10 10 19 19 19 15 15 9 6 9 10 7 7 10 15 10 10 10 15

Hybrid flowshop scheduling model 129

Notes: X = job; SSX = number of garments being drawn on the marker; PX = number of fabric plies; SX = total spreading time of fabric lay; CX = cutting time of fabric lay

Table IV. Characteristics of fabric lays

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The total operation time of cutting machine m7 was 688 minutes in which five 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 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 garments required garments provided garments provided garments provided by the sewing by the cutting by the cutting by the cutting department machine m7 machine m8 department 7,500 8,000 7,000 6,500 2,861 3,015 2,708 2,861 4,721 5,536 4,380 3,739 7,582 8,551 7,088 6,600

Table V. Comparison between quantities of garment required by the sewing department and quantities of garment generated by GA-based SCS scheduler

Time (start at 0 min) 175 350 525 700 mins mins mins mins

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Hybrid flowshop scheduling model 131