Scheduling and Resource Allocation Problems in Some Flow Type Manufacturing Processes

Abstract

Many manufacturing processes characterize by a flow of works (jobs) through successive machines (processors, devices) in a given technological order. The classical multi-machine flow-shop problems have traditionally been considered in many papers (e.g. in [11]) under the assumption that work processing times are-constant parameters, However, in many manufacturing processes work processing times may vary over the ranges of durations bounded by the maximum (normal) and minimum (crash) value of duration. In other words in such situations a scheduler (an algorithm) may have at its disposal certain continuously - divisible limited resources, such as financial outlay, energy, gas, fuel, catalyzer, raw materials, power, which may be applied to reduce effectively the processing times of individual works. Such problems require a more general approach to scheduling, one that determines not only the order in which works should be processed, but also the distribution of limited resources to individual works or to machines on which they are processed.