Minimizing the sum of flow times with batching and delivery in a supply chain

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The aim of this thesis is to study one of the classical scheduling objectives that is of minimizing the sum of flow times, in the context of a supply chain network. We consider the situation that a supplier schedules a set of jobs for delivery in batches to several manufacturers, who in tum have to schedule and deliver jobs in batches to several customers. The individual problem from the viewpoint of supplier and manufacturers will be considered separately. The decision problem faced by the supplier is that of minimizing the sum of flow time and delivery cost of a set of jobs to be processed on a single machine for delivery in batches to manufacturers. The problem from the viewpoint of manufacturer is similar to the supplier's problem and the only difference is that the scheduling, batching and delivery decisions made by the supplier define a release date for each job, before which the manufacturer cannot start the processing of that job. Also a combined problem in the light of cooperation between the supplier and manufacturer will be considered. The objective of the combined problem is to find the best scheduling, batching, and delivery decisions that benefit the entire system including the supplier and manufacturer. Structural properties of each problem are investigated and used to devise a branch and bound solution scheme. Computational experience shows significant improvements over existing algorithms and also shows that cooperation between a supplier and a manufacturer reduces the total system cost of up to 12.35%, while theoretically the reduction of up to 20% can be achieved for special cases

Minimizing the sum of flow times with batching and delivery in a supply chain

The aim of this thesis is to study one of the classical scheduling objectives that is of minimizing the sum of flow times, in the context of a supply chain network. We consider the situation that a supplier schedules a set of jobs for delivery in batches to several manufacturers, who in tum have to schedule and deliver jobs in batches to several customers. The individual problem from the viewpoint of supplier and manufacturers will be considered separately. The decision problem faced by the supplier is that of minimizing the sum of flow time and delivery cost of a set of jobs to be processed on a single machine for delivery in batches to manufacturers. The problem from the viewpoint of manufacturer is similar to the supplier's problem and the only difference is that the scheduling, batching and delivery decisions made by the supplier define a release date for each job, before which the manufacturer cannot start the processing of that job. Also a combined problem in the light of cooperation between the supplier and manufacturer will be considered. The objective of the combined problem is to find the best scheduling, batching, and delivery decisions that benefit the entire system including the supplier and manufacturer. Structural properties of each problem are investigated and used to devise a branch and bound solution scheme. Computational experience shows significant improvements over existing algorithms and also shows that cooperation between a supplier and a manufacturer reduces the total system cost of up to 12.35%, while theoretically the reduction of up to 20% can be achieved for special cases.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Online Optimization with Lookahead

The main contributions of this thesis consist of the development of a systematic groundwork for comprehensive performance evaluation of algorithms in online optimization with lookahead and the subsequent validation of the presented approaches in theoretical analysis and computational experiments

Voraussicht zur Verbesserung der Zielerreichung bei prioritätsregelgesteuerter Produktion

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein umfassender Überblick zum Thema Voraussicht im Rahmen der Ablaufplanung gewährt. Zunächst werden die unterschiedlichen Verfahren aus allen Bereichen der Ablaufplanung dargestellt und klassifiziert. Darauf folgend werden neu entwickelte Verfahren vorgestellt, die als Repräsentanten ihrer Klassen zur Erweiterung von Prioritätsregeln eingesetzt werden können. Dabei handelt es sich um ein modulares Konzept, das es gestattet, die Einzelmechanismen in beliebiger Kombination einzusetzen. Zur Überprüfung der Wirksamkeit findet eine Untersuchung aller entwickelten Verfahren im Rahmen eines stochastisch dynamischen Job Shops mithilfe umfangreicher Experimente statt. Bestandteil dieser experimentellen Studie ist auch die Untersuchung der Wechselwirkungen der verschiedenen Voraussichtsmechanismen. Die Experimentergebnisse zeigen auf, dass Voraussicht in vielen Situationen zur Verbesserung der Zielerreichung eingesetzt werden kann und liefern zudem zahlreiche Erkenntnisse über den Einfluss der Systemparameter auf die Vorteilhaftigkeit der einzelnen Voraussichtsklassen