A new dynamic look-ahead scheduling procedure for batching machines

Abstract

SUMMARYThe management of batching machines has raised a wide interest among researchers and practitioners in the recent years. The problem lies in that, whenever less than a full load is queuing at a batching machine, production planners have to decide whether to start processing the incomplete load or to wait for additional jobs. This paper proposes a new procedure for scheduling several products on parallel batching machines. This new procedure, motivated by shop oor control in semiconductor manufacturing, has been developed and tested by means of a simulation model of a re-entrant owmanufacturing environment, which allows multiple loops along the job routings. The proposed procedure is shown to yield a better performance than the actual industrial practice from the point of view of ow-time-related indexes without adversely a ecting the system's utilization rate.

Effect of upstream re-sequencing in controlling cycle time performance of batch processors

“…The control task is to find the best batching alternative in a near-future look-ahead window. Glassey and Weng (1991), Fowler, Phillips, and Hogg (1992a), Robinson et al (1995), Van Der Zee et al (1997), Duenyas and Neale (1997) and Cigolini et al (2002) propose different look-ahead batch control strategies to minimize cycle time based objectives. Kim, Kim, Choi, and Kim (2001) provide a modification of Glassey and Weng's DBH strategy, namely MDBH, to minimize total tardiness.…”

“…They addressed the influence of downstream setup times on batching decisions. Cigolini, Perona, Portioli, and Zambelli (2002) incorporated the ''Wait No Longer Than Time'' (WNLTT) concept from semiconductor manufacturing, which is the maximum delay that is expected to reduce the average waiting time in a look-ahead decision horizon. They focused on multiple product type scenarios with a set-up time requirement on the batch processor for loading different product types consecutively.…”

Dynamic control of the batch processor in a serial-batch processor system with mean tardiness performance

“…The control task is to find the best batching alternative in a near-future look-ahead window. Glassey and Weng (1991), Fowler et al (1992), Robinson et al (1995), Duenyas and Neale (1997), Van der Zee et al (1997), and Cigolini et al (2002) propose different look-ahead batch control strategies to minimise cycle time based objectives. Kim et al (2001) provide a modification of Glassey and Weng's DBH strategy, namely MDBH, to minimise total tardiness.…”

Solving single batch-processing machine problems using an iterated heuristic

“…The MBS rule only considers waiting jobs in the queue. Gupta and Sivakumar (2006) and Cigolini et al (2002) developed different look-ahead batching strategies; both studies have considered future incoming jobs in making batching decisions. The above studies have not considered the case of jobs with non-identical job sizes.…”