Heuristic Scheduling Of Job Orders In A Two-Stage Flow Shop With Batch-Processing Machines

Abstract

With the continuous development of technology, traditionally manual works have been becoming more and more automatic. Most of large or medium-sized companies have applied Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software into their business and production activities, but due to its expensive cost, small ones cannot afford for that and still work manually in several stages, especially scheduling. This paper would like to give a possible solution for small businesses to try scheduling automatically and know whether it can help much. There are two main ways, mathematical model and heuristic one which are suitable for low and medium workload, respectively. The case study was carried out in a small domestic interior furniture named Hand Décor Co. LTD, particularly in scheduling for their customized products in two-stage flow shop. Normally, they produce according to the sequence of customers’ orders, however, when applying these supportive tools with batch-processing machines of this paper, they have enhanced the performance of production hanks for diminishing the setup time of distinctive items and arranging job sequences more reasonably. This was merely implemented on some small companies which do not have many stages of production and have a suitable number of jobs and customers. If applied for bigger demands, it would need more improvement and development to become a complete tool which can perform like a part of ERP systems.