Plywood production scheduling for years has been
considered, more or less, a sacred activity in which only
a select group of individuals with the experience and
knowledge could take part. With the advancements in
computer technology and related fields, the plywood
industry is in a position where more people can...
This thesis is intended to provide the management of small to medium sized job shop companies with a written plan to implement a formal computerized manufacturing planning and control system. The research stemmed from a case study performed at a typical job shop where growth of production activities was complicating...
Automated storage and Retrieval (AS/R) systems have had
a significant impact on storage and retrieval of finished
goods, work-in-process, and raw materials and supplies. A
microcomputer-based simulation model was developed to
evaluate different unit load AS/R systems serving multiple
input sources and output destinations. The simulation results
were statistically analyzed...
A solution to the problems of computer scheduling of students
based on course requests rather than section requests is discussed.
The solution involves keeping all course data in core during the
scheduling process to enable the scheduling program to run as fast as
possible and using a scheduling algorithm which...
Scheduling a continuous manufacturing flow shop environment with several
machines, stochastic arrival of demands, different product requirements and limited
resources is a complex task. This research develops a methodology for scheduling
products in glass fiber industry. The system consists of two components. An optimizing
linear program determines the optimal solution...
Good tool management and job operating strategies will
result in reduction in tool inventory and associated costs.
Very little empirical research has been conducted on a
Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) as a whole in relation
to its performances with tool movement approach,
specifically in a dynamic job shop in a...
Unrelated parallel machines are machines that perform the same function but have
different capacity or capability. Thus, the processing time of each job would be different
on machines of different types. The scheduling environment considered is dynamic in
both job release time and machine availability. Additionally, each job considered can...
In this dissertation, a two stage flexible flow shop scheduling problem is studied, where in stage 1, there are identical batch processors (burnout ovens) and in stage 2, there are identical discrete processors (furnaces). Batch processors perform a pre-heating process on a batch of jobs at a time and discrete...
Cellular manufacturing, which is also referred to as group technology among researchers, has primarily been used as a means to increase productivity, efficiency and flexibility. Under group technology, similar jobs, which have similar shape, material, and processing operations are assigned to the same group. Moreover, dissimilar machines are assigned to...
A flexible flowshop, comprised of one or more stages having unrelated parallel machines, is investigated in this research. Unrelated parallel machines can perform the same function but have different capacity or capability. Since this problem is motivated by industry research, dynamic job release times and dynamic machine availability times have...
In this research, an analytical model for analyzing a production line consisting of a series
of automated workstations with infinite buffers is developed. Automated workstations are
assumed to have deterministic processing times, and independent exponentially
distributed operating time between failures and repair times. The analytical model starts
with existing results...
In this research, a bi-criteria group scheduling problem is investigated in hybrid flow shop (HFS) environments, where the parallel machines in each stage are unrelated, meaning not identical. The objective of the problem is to minimize a linear combination of the total weighted completion times as a means of complying...
An evaluation of scheduling heuristics for non-identical
parallel processors was performed. There has been
limited research that has focused on scheduling of parallel
processors. This research generalizes the results from
prior work in this area and examines complex scheduling
rules in terms of flow time, tardiness, and proportion of
tardy...
This research considers a combinatorial optimization scheduling problem in the assembly of printed circuit boards (PCBs) in electronic manufacturing. For the first time in this research, the preparation process, which is typically called kitting operation, is paid attention to and is performed along with the assembly operation, described in this...
An experimental investigation of factors effecting
scheduling a system of parallel, non-identical processors
using a series of experimental designs was carried out.
System variables included were processor capacities
relationships, sequencing and assignment rules, job size, and
product demand distributions. The effect of the variables was
measured by comparing mean flow...
A decision support system (DSS) for nurse scheduling in
hospitals is developed and implemented on microcomputer. The
system includes algorithms and databases for developing weekly
work and shift patterns and combining these into working
schedules for nurses for a specified time horizon, and
interface modules for the user to interact...
Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs) have evolved rapidly over the last decade. One important factor that influences the performance of FMS is scheduling. Scheduling in an FMS differs from that in a conventional job-shop because each operation of a job may be performed by any one of several machines. Most studies...
The research presented in this dissertation addresses the Multi-Mode Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (MMRCPSP) in the presence of resource unavailability. This research is motivated by the scheduling of engineering design tasks in automotive product development to minimize the project completion time, but addresses a general scheduling situation that is applicable...
Poor material utilization is inherent to conventional manufacturing processes, leading to high material waste and machining times. Additive manufacturing processes attempt to solve this issue by allowing production of near-net shapes, but the processes may be too expensive or infeasible. By leveraging both processes in a single part, the waste...
In northeast China, logging has three stages; timber
harvest, transportation and the operations inside a timber
yard. The timber yard is an intermediate transhipment point between truck transport and rail transport to manufacturing centers. The transhipment capacity of the timber yard is often the limiting acitivity in the logging chain....
The objective of this research project was to identify the limitations associated
with schedule-based Material Requirements Planning (SBMRP) and to
present a knowledge-based expert system (KBES) approach to solve these problems.
In SBMRP, the basic strategy is to use backward or forward scheduling
based on an arbitrary dispatching rule, such...
Expert systems have been suggested as a solution
for difficult problems, including FMS scheduling. As
one of the aspects of artificial intelligence (AI), expert
systems have achieved considerable success in recent
years in medical science, chemistry, and engineering.
However, building an expert system is a difficult
task, the most crucial...
Many systematic methods exist for mapping algorithms to processor arrays. The algorithm is usually specified as a set of recurrence equations, and the processor arrays are synthesized by finding timing and allocation functions which transform index points in the recurrences into points in a space-time domain. The problem of scheduling...
This study is concerned with the problem of resource-constrained project scheduling which includes splittable and nonsplittable jobs, renewable and nonrenewable resources, variation in resource availabi1ity, time-resource tradeoff, time-cost tradeoff, and multiple objectives.
The problem is formulated as a zero-one integer programming model. A specialized solution technique is developed for the...
In container terminals, the efficiency of loading operations in a container yard highly
depends on the productivity of yard cranes. In loading operation, yard cranes have to
pick-up the containers which are stacked in the yard-bays to satisfy the work schedule
requirement of quay crane, the equipment for loading and...
A multistage production system consists of a number of
production stages that are interrelated, that is the output
from one stage forms input to the next stage. There are
constraints associated with each stage as well as constraints
imposed by the overall system. Besides, there are multiple
objectives that need...
Today's manufacturing environment is characterized by competition and
continuous change in product and process requirements. The concept of
"design for manufacturability" integrates product specifications with
manufacturing capabilities by considering the design and manufacturing
phases as an integrated system, evaluating the combined system during
the design phase of a product ,...