Decomposition and Coordination Method for Flowshop Scheduling Problems Represented by Timed Automata

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a decomposition and coordination method for timed automata for modeling and solution of flowshop scheduling problems. Parallel composition of timed automata makes it possible to describe concurrent dynamics for several submodels. To reduce state space explosion for solving an optimal state transition problem represented by the parallel composition of timed automata, a decomposition and coordination method for timed automata is developed. In the proposed method, a feasible solution is derived by the replication of solving each subproblem and coodinating the solution of each decomposed subproblem. Computational experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for flowshop scheduling problems.