A distributed shifting bottleneck heuristic for complex job shops

  • Authors:

  • Lars Mönch;René Drieíel

  • Affiliations:

  • Institute of Information Systems, Technical University of Ilmenau, Helmholtzplatz 3, 98684 Ilmenau, Germany;X-CASE GmbH, Albert Einstein Str. 3, 98684 Ilmenau, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Computers and Industrial Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2005

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.01

Visualization

Abstract

In this paper, we consider distributed versions of a modified shifting bottleneck heuristic for complex job shops. The considered job shop environment contains parallel batching machines, machines with sequence-dependent setup times and reentrant process flows. Semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities are typical examples for manufacturing systems with these characteristics. The used performance measure is total weighted tardiness (TWT). We suggest a two-layer hierarchical approach in order to decompose the overall scheduling problem. The upper (or top) layer works on an aggregated model. Based on appropriately aggregated routes it determines start dates and planned due dates for the jobs within each single work area, where a work area is defined as a set of parallel machine groups. The lower (or base) layer uses the start dates and planned due dates in order to apply shifting bottleneck heuristic type solution approaches for the jobs in each single work area. We conduct simulation experiments in a dynamic job shop environment in order to assess the performance of the heuristic. It turns out that the suggested approach outperforms a pure First In First Out (FIFO) dispatching scheme and provides a similar solution quality as the original modified shifting bottleneck heuristic.