Production Scheduling

What it covers

It starts with the problem's vocabulary, moves through the methods from least to most effort, and ends with what happens when the schedule reaches the plant.

1. Planning and schedulingWhat gets decided in the master plan and what in the schedule: horizon, granularity and who owns each number.
2. Jobs, machines and constraintsProcessing times, due dates, precedence and shared resources. How to write down a scheduling problem before solving it.
3. Dispatching rulesSPT, EDD, first in. When a simple rule is enough, and what each one optimizes without saying so.
4. Shop configurationsOne machine, parallel machines, flow shop and job shop. Why the shape of the plant changes which method works.
5. Setups and sequencingChangeover times that depend on the order: a problem that looks like the travelling salesman and shows up in almost every consumer-goods plant.
6. Integer programming for schedulingTime-indexed and sequence-based formulations. Which problem sizes solve to optimality and which do not.
7. Constraint programmingIntervals, resources and logical constraints. Why it often outperforms integer programming for scheduling.
8. MetaheuristicsLocal search, genetic algorithms and simulated annealing: good solutions for large plants in the time a meeting takes.
9. Finite capacityFrom an MRP that assumes infinite capacity to a schedule that can actually be met. Bottlenecks, and where to look first.
10. Competing objectivesMeeting due dates, minimizing setups and cutting work in process pull in different directions. How to choose the compromise.
11. ReschedulingThe machine that breaks, the rush order, the input that did not arrive. Rescheduling without changing the whole schedule.
12. From schedule to shop floorWhat the supervisor knows and the model does not, how schedule adherence is measured, and the feedback loop.