A Method of Flow-Shop Re-Scheduling Dealing with Variation of Productive Capacity

Abstract

We can make optimum scheduling results using various methods that are proposed by many researchers. However, it is very difficult to process the works on time without delaying the schedule. There are two major causes that disturb the planned optimum schedules; they are (1)the variation of productive capacity, and (2)the variation of products' quantities themselves. In this paper, we deal with the former variation, or productive capacities, at flow-shop works. When production machines in a shop go out of order at flow-shops, we cannot continue to operate the productions and we have to stop the production line. To the contrary, we can continue to operate the shops even if some workers absent themselves. Of course, in this case, the production capacities become lower, because workers need to move from a machine to another to overcome the shortage of workers and some shops cannot be operated because of the worker shortage. We developed a new re-scheduling method based on Branch-and Bound method. We proposed an equation for calculating the lower bound for our Branch-and Bound method in a practical time. Some evaluation experiments are done using practical data of real flow-shop works. We compared our results with those of another simple scheduling method, and we confirmed the total production time of our result is shorter than that of another method by 4%.

Keywords

• Flow-Shop Scheduling
• Variation of Productive Capacity
• Branch-And-Bound Method