Practical Scheduling of Manufacturing Systems

这项正在进行的关于作业车间调度的研究工作探索了制造业中的三个普遍问题。第一个问题是用物料清单来安排产品，以提高产品的准时交货率。第二个问题涉及能够同时批处理几个作业的设施的调度，例如烤箱或电镀设施。由于这些设施往往昂贵且加工时间较长，它们构成了许多制造系统的瓶颈。柔性制造单元(FMC)的调度是第三个要研究的问题。本研究的目的是获得一种高效、有效和一致的解决一般作业车间调度问题的方法。通过广泛的合作，已经开发出一种使用拉格朗日松弛技术的基于优化的调度方法。该方法具有许多积极的特点，并已在一家主要航空制造商的开发运营车间进行了测试。然而，处理材料清单、批处理设施和FMC的能力对于该方法真正有效地适用于普通工作车间至关重要。因此，本研究将促进生产调度方法学的发展和实践，提高许多制造企业的盈利能力。

This ongoing research effort on job shop scheduling explores three generic problems in the manufacturing industry. The first problem is to schedule products with bills of materials to improve on-time deliveries of products. The second problem pertains to the scheduling of facilities capable of batch processing several jobs concurrently, such as an oven or a plating facility. Since these facilities are often expensive and have long processing times, they constitute bottlenecks in many manufacturing systems. The scheduling of a flexible manufacturing cell (FMC) is the third problem for study. The purpose of this research is to obtain an efficient, effective and consistent solution methodology for scheduling general job shops. Through extensive collaboration, an optimization-based scheduling methodology using the Lagrangian relaxation technique has been developed. The method has many positive features, and has been tested at the Development Operations shop of a major aerospace manufacturer. The abilities to handle bills of materials, batch facilities, and FMC's, however, are of crucial importance for the method to be truly effective for general job shops. This research will thus advance the state of the art and practice of scheduling methodology, and enhance the profit-making ability of many manufacturing companies.