Abstract
In this paper we develop an efficient heuristic algorithm for the problem of scheduling n sequence-dependent jobs on a basic processor to minimize makespan. Efficient solution methods are already known for the sequence- independent case. But for the sequence-dependent case, this problem belongs to a set of strong NP-complete problems. We present a heuristic which is similar to shortest setup time heuristic but opportunity cost of setup time rather than shortest setup time is used for choosing next job. This heuristic algorithm has same computational complexity and worst case ratio as the shortest setup time heuristic. We used Wilcoxon signed rank test to show that our heuristic is superior to nearest setup time heuristic in term of average behavior.
