Abstract: An iterative method of sequencing jobs in a flexible manufacturing environment where such manufacturing jobs have sequence-dependent set-up times provides for solutions which approximate optimal sequencing while requiring only modest computational resources. Initially, the invention recasts a sequence of manufacturing jobs as a dynamic traveling salesman problem (TSP), in which the system must reconfigure itself and then execute each job in the same way a salesman must visit a sequence of cities, but where the distances between cities change depending upon cities already visited. The first step of the invention reduces the difficult dynamic traveling salesman problem to a static TSP, where distances between each possible job pair are fixed as a monotonic function of parts the two jobs share in common.