Scheduling with controllable processing times in a CNC environment

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Flexible manufacturing systems give a manufacturer some capabilities to consider and solve different manufacturing problems simultaneously instead of one by one in a sequential manner. Using those makes her more competitive in the market. One of those capabilities is controllable processing times. By using this capability, the due date requirements of customers can be satisfied much more effectively. Processing times of the jobs in a CNC machine can be easily controlled via machining conditions such that they can be increased or decreased at the expense of tooling cost. In this study, we consider the problem of scheduling a set of jobs by minimizing the sum of total weighted tardiness, tooling and machining costs on a single CNC machine. This problem is NP-hard since the total weighted tardiness problem is NP-hard alone. Moreover, the problem is non-linear because of the nature of the tooling cost. We proposed a DP-based heuristic to solve the problem for a given sequence and designed a local search algorithm that uses it as a base heuristic.İlhan, TaylanM.S

Single machine scheduling problems with uncertain parameters and the OWA criterion

In this paper a class of single machine scheduling problems is discussed. It is assumed that job parameters, such as processing times, due dates, or weights are uncertain and their values are specified in the form of a discrete scenario set. The Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) aggregation operator is used to choose an optimal schedule. The OWA operator generalizes traditional criteria in decision making under uncertainty, such as the maximum, average, median or Hurwicz criterion. It also allows us to extend the robust approach to scheduling by taking into account various attitudes of decision makers towards the risk. In this paper a general framework for solving single machine scheduling problems with the OWA criterion is proposed and some positive and negative computational results for two basic single machine scheduling problems are provided

Parameterized complexity of machine scheduling: 15 open problems

Machine scheduling problems are a long-time key domain of algorithms and complexity research. A novel approach to machine scheduling problems are fixed-parameter algorithms. To stimulate this thriving research direction, we propose 15 open questions in this area whose resolution we expect to lead to the discovery of new approaches and techniques both in scheduling and parameterized complexity theory.Comment: Version accepted to Computers & Operations Researc

How the structure of precedence constraints may change the complexity class of scheduling problems

This survey aims at demonstrating that the structure of precedence constraints plays a tremendous role on the complexity of scheduling problems. Indeed many problems can be NP-hard when considering general precedence constraints, while they become polynomially solvable for particular precedence constraints. We also show that there still are many very exciting challenges in this research area