Fatigue Integration to the Flowshop Scheduling Problem

Abstract

Although automation has increased, hand-intensive production systems persist because workers are required to be extremely flexible and precise in completing some tasks. As a result of their impact on manual task productivity, learning and fatigue effects generate interest. This article discusses a flowshop scheduling problem (FSSP) involving physical fatigue. This configuration is commonly used in hand-intensive production systems. A multi-agent model is proposed to validate the integration of physical fatigue into the FSSP. The case study described in this paper is based on a manual picking line with one worker per station. In order to recover efficiently, the location and duration of breaks are crucial. Two break policies are evaluated in this article to identify their impact on human and system performance. As an exploratory approach, this research used benchmark datasets to conduct validation experiments. Our contribution is to develop a model that incorporates fatigue into a flowshop type production system, and define the policy of breaks to minimize the human fatigue dose. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.