Scheduling Jobs in Flowshops with the Introduction of Additional Machines in the Future

This is the author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/expert-systems-with-applications/.The problem of scheduling jobs to minimize total weighted tardiness in flowshops,\ud with the possibility of evolving into hybrid flowshops in the future, is investigated in\ud this paper. As this research is guided by a real problem in industry, the flowshop\ud considered has considerable flexibility, which stimulated the development of an\ud innovative methodology for this research. Each stage of the flowshop currently has\ud one or several identical machines. However, the manufacturing company is planning\ud to introduce additional machines with different capabilities in different stages in the\ud near future. Thus, the algorithm proposed and developed for the problem is not only\ud capable of solving the current flow line configuration but also the potential new\ud configurations that may result in the future. A meta-heuristic search algorithm based\ud on Tabu search is developed to solve this NP-hard, industry-guided problem. Six\ud different initial solution finding mechanisms are proposed. A carefully planned\ud nested split-plot design is performed to test the significance of different factors and\ud their impact on the performance of the different algorithms. To the best of our\ud knowledge, this research is the first of its kind that attempts to solve an industry-guided\ud problem with the concern for future developments

A survey of scheduling problems with setup times or costs

Author name used in this publication: C. T. NgAuthor name used in this publication: T. C. E. Cheng2007-2008 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

Heuristic Algorithms to Minimize Total Weighted Tardiness on the Single Machine and Identical Parallel Machines with Sequence Dependent Setup and Future Ready Time

This study generates heuristic algorithms to minimize the total weighted tardiness on the single machine and identical parallel machines with sequence dependent setup and future ready time. Due to the complexity of the considered problem, we propose two new Apparent Tardiness Cost based (ATC-based) rules. The performances of these two rules are evaluated on the single machine and identical parallel machines. Besides of these two rules, we also propose a look-ahead identical parallel machines heuristic (LAIPM). When a machine becomes idle, it selects a job to process from available jobs and near future jobs. The proposed method, LAIPM, is evaluated with other look-ahead methods on the identical parallel machines

Minimizing the makespan in a flexible flowshop with sequence dependent setup times, uniform machines, and limited buffers

This research addresses the problem of minimizing the makespan in a flexible flowshop with sequence dependent setup times, uniform machines, and limited buffers. A mathematical model was developed to solve this problem. The problem is NP-Hard in the strong sense and only very small problems could be solved optimally. For exact methods, the computation times are long and not practical even when the problems are relatively small. Two construction heuristics were developed that could find solutions quickly. Also a simulated annealing heuristic was constructed that improved the solutions obtained from the construction heuristics. The combined heuristics could compute a good solution in a short amount of time. The heuristics were tested in three different environments: 3 stages, 4 stages, and 5 stages. To assess the quality of the solutions, a lower bound and two simple heuristics were generated for comparison purposes. The proposed heuristics showed steady improvement over the simple heuristics. When compared to the lower bounds, the heuristics performed well for the smaller environment, but the performance quality decreased as the number of stages increased. The combination of these heuristics defiantly shows promise for solving the problem

Scheduling in assembly type job-shops

Assembly type job-shop scheduling is a generalization of the job-shop scheduling problem to include assembly operations. In the assembly type job-shops scheduling problem, there are n jobs which are to be processed on in workstations and each job has a due date. Each job visits one or more workstations in a predetermined route. The primary difference between this new problem and the classical job-shop problem is that two or more jobs can merge to foul\u27 a new job at a specified workstation, that is job convergence is permitted. This feature cannot be modeled by existing job-shop techniques. In this dissertation, we develop scheduling procedures for the assembly type job-shop with the objective of minimizing total weighted tardiness. Three types of workstations are modeled: single machine, parallel machine, and batch machine. We label this new scheduling procedure as SB. The SB procedure is heuristic in nature and is derived from the shifting bottleneck concept. SB decomposes the assembly type job-shop scheduling problem into several workstation scheduling sub-problems. Various types of techniques are used in developing the scheduling heuristics for these sub-problems including the greedy method, beam search, critical path analysis, local search, and dynamic programming. The performance of SB is validated on a set of test problems and compared with priority rules that are normally used in practice. The results show that SB outperforms the priority rules by an average of 19% - 36% for the test problems. SB is extended to solve scheduling problems with other objectives including minimizing the maximum completion time, minimizing weighted flow time and minimizing maximum weighted lateness. Comparisons with the test problems, indicate that SB outperforms the priority rules for these objectives as well. The SB procedure and its accompanying logic is programmed into an object oriented scheduling system labeled as LEKIN. The LEKIN program includes a standard library of scheduling rules and hence can be used as a platform for the development of new scheduling heuristics. In industrial applications LEKIN allows schedulers to obtain effective machine schedules rapidly. The results from this research allow us to increase shop utilization, improve customer satisfaction, and lower work-in-process inventory without a major capital investment