---
title: "Makespan minimization research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “makespan minimization” appeared in 1,210 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (944), AI (248) and information systems (15)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/makespan-minimization
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/makespan-minimization.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “makespan minimization” appeared in 1,210 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (944), AI (248) and information systems (15). (as of 2026-11-03)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-03T18:03:37+09:00
window: 2026-10-05 to 2026-11-03
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “makespan minimization”

Research on “makespan minimization” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers.

Back to the ranking: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/keywords.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “makespan minimization” appeared in 1,210 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (944), AI (248) and information systems (15).
- 177 of them were published in 2025, against 85 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Huazhong University of Science and Technology (33), Liaocheng University (20) and Hefei University of Technology (18).
- The journals publishing most of them were Computers & Industrial Engineering (100), Expert Systems with Applications (100) and Computers & Operations Research (82).
- The most-cited of them is “Iterated Greedy methods for the distributed permutation flowshop scheduling problem” (Omega, 2018), with 419 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 75 | 82 | 96 | 85 | 92 | 86 | 98 | 104 | 121 | 105 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 10 | 6 | 18 | 22 | 18 | 34 | 33 | 25 | 51 | 31 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 3 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 85 | 89 | 117 | 108 | 110 | 121 | 132 | 132 | 177 | 139 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 100 |
| 2 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 100 |
| 3 | [Computers & Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-operations-research.md) | 82 |
| 4 | [European Journal of Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/european-journal-of-operational-research.md) | 56 |
| 5 | [Journal of Combinatorial Optimization](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-combinatorial-optimization.md) | 30 |
| 6 | [Annals of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-operations-research.md) | 25 |
| 7 | [Journal of Scheduling](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-scheduling.md) | 25 |
| 8 | [Transportation Research Part E Logistics and Transportation Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-e-logistics-and-transportation-review.md) | 16 |
| 9 | [Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/flexible-services-and-manufacturing-journal.md) | 12 |
| 10 | [IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-evolutionary-computation.md) | 11 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Huazhong University of Science and Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/huazhong-university-of-science-and-technology.md) | 33 |
| 2 | Liaocheng University | 20 |
| 3 | [Hefei University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hefei-university-of-technology.md) | 18 |
| 4 | [Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/centre-national-de-la-recherche-scientifique.md) | 14 |
| 5 | [Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanjing-university-of-aeronautics-and-astronautics.md) | 14 |
| 6 | [Shanghai University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shanghai-university.md) | 13 |
| 7 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 13 |
| 8 | [Northwestern Polytechnical University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/northwestern-polytechnical-university.md) | 12 |
| 9 | [Shanghai Maritime University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shanghai-maritime-university.md) | 12 |
| 10 | [Wuhan University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/wuhan-university-of-technology.md) | 12 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 340 |
| 2 | France | 35 |
| 3 | United States | 33 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 28 |
| 5 | Canada | 25 |
| 6 | Germany | 23 |
| 7 | South Korea | 21 |
| 8 | Italy | 19 |
| 9 | Brazil | 15 |
| 10 | Netherlands | 15 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [mixed-integer linear programming](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/mixed-integer-linear-programming.md) | 91 |
| 2 | [multi-objective optimization](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-objective-optimization.md) | 66 |
| 3 | flexible job shop scheduling | 54 |
| 4 | energy optimization | 43 |
| 5 | approximation algorithms | 35 |
| 6 | single machine scheduling | 35 |
| 7 | variable neighborhood search | 33 |
| 8 | lower bounds | 32 |
| 9 | [deep reinforcement learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/deep-reinforcement-learning.md) | 31 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 419 | 4.0 | [Iterated Greedy methods for the distributed permutation flowshop scheduling problem](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2018.03.004) | [Omega](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/omega.md) | 2018-03-16 | Rubén Ruíz, Quan-Ke Pan, Bahman Naderi |
| 2 | 328 | 4.1 | [Mixed-integer linear programming and constraint programming formulations for solving distributed flexible job shop scheduling problem](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2020.106347) | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 2020-02-10 | Leilei Meng, Chaoyong Zhang, Yaping Ren et al. |
| 3 | 320 | 4.9 | [An updated survey of variants and extensions of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2021.05.004) | [European Journal of Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/european-journal-of-operational-research.md) | 2021-05-26 | Sönke Hartmann, Dirk Briskorn |
| 4 | 281 | 3.2 | [A matheuristic for the vehicle routing problem with drones and its variants](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2019.06.016) | [Transportation Research Part C Emerging Technologies](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-c-emerging-technologies.md) | 2019-07-22 | Daniel Schermer, Mahdi Moeini A, Oliver Wendt |
| 5 | 265 | 2.9 | [A hybrid VNS/Tabu search algorithm for solving the vehicle routing problem with drones and en route operations](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2019.04.021) | [Computers & Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-operations-research.md) | 2019-05-01 | Daniel Schermer, Mahdi Moeini A, Oliver Wendt |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “makespan minimization”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/makespan-minimization

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-makespan-minimization,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “makespan minimization”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/makespan-minimization}},
  urldate = {2026-11-03},
  note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).