Stochastic Minimization of the Makespan in Flow Shops with Identical Machines and Buffers of Arbitrary Size

Stochastic permutation flow shops of m identical machines and n jobs are considered. There exist buffers of arbitrary size between two consecutive machines. For particular types of job processing times, we present optimal schedules which minimize the makespan in the stochastic sense. Moreover, it will be shown that the optimal schedules are closely related to those of the no buffer case. Finally, our results are recaptured in the context of tandem queues.