Yes / Scheduling is an important element that has a major impact on the efficiency of all
manufacturing processes. It plays an important role in optimising the manufacturing times and
costs resulting in energy efficient processes. It has been estimated that more than 75% of
manufacturing processes occur in small batches. In such environments, processes must be able to
perform a variety of operations on a mix of different batches. Batch-job scheduling optimisation is
the response to such low batch manufacturing problems. The optimisation of batch-job process
scheduling problem is still a challenge to researchers and is far from being completely solved due
to its combinatorial nature. In this paper, a novel hybrid heuristic (HybH) solution approach for
batch-job scheduling problem is presented with the objective of optimising the overall Makespan
(Cmax). The proposed HybH is the combination of Index Based Heuristic (IBH) and the Finished
Batch-Job (FBJ) process schedule. The heuristic assigns the first operation to a batch-job using
IBH and the remaining operations on the basis FBJ process schedule. The FBJ process schedule
gives priority to the batch-job with early finished operations, without violating the constraints of
process order. The proposed HybH is explained with the help of a detailed example. Several
benchmark problems are solved from the literature to check the validity and effectiveness of the
proposed heuristic. The presented HybH has achieved batch-job process schedules which have
outperformed the traditional heuristics. The results are encouraging and show that the proposed
heuristic is a valid methodology for batch process scheduling optimisation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/9550 |
| Date | 05 August 2011 |
| Creators | Maqsood, Shahid, Khan, M. Khurshid, Wood, Alastair S. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, published version paper |
| Rights | © 2011 De Gruyter. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's selfarchiving policy. |
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