Modelling and optimization of industrial manufacturing processes subject to no-wait constraints

This paper deals with scheduling of no-wait manufacturing processes. The main features of these systems are analysed and an industrial application is described in detail. No standard solution procedure has been devised in the literature for this difficult scheduling problem. We exploit a heuristic d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of production research Vol. 37; no. 11; pp. 2585 - 2607
Main Authors Macchiaroli, R., Mole, S., Riemma, S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Taylor & Francis Group 01.07.1999
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ISSN0020-7543
1366-588X
DOI10.1080/002075499190671

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Summary:This paper deals with scheduling of no-wait manufacturing processes. The main features of these systems are analysed and an industrial application is described in detail. No standard solution procedure has been devised in the literature for this difficult scheduling problem. We exploit a heuristic decomposition approach which allows the reduction of the searchable solutions space and makes use of sequencing and timetabling modules. The timetabling can be performed by a polynomial time algorithm. To make the sequencing decision we propose several heuristic rules, a decomposition approach making use of fuzzy logic and an algorithm based on tabu search. The extensive computational results reported show the clear superiority of the tabu search approach.
ISSN:0020-7543
1366-588X
DOI:10.1080/002075499190671