Looking up papers that cite another paper I want to read in Google Scholar sometimes reveals things closer to my understanding. So an answer to a math problem is applied to a practical problem here.
Heuristic scheduling of parallel machines with sequence-dependent set-up times
https://marybethkurz.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2001-Kurz-Askin-2001-IJPR-Heuristic-scheduling-of-parallel-machines-with-sequence-dependent-set-up-times.pdf