Some aspects of scheduling in a group technology manufacturing system

Abstract

Since the late 1940's, the concept of group technology manufacturing has become more commonly used. One of the essential requirements for full utilisation of the benefits of Group Technology is to adopt appropriate operation scheduling methods. This work proposes a manual scheduling rule (Rule Y) to tackle the group scheduling problems in a group layout system. The procedures for short-term programme formation and loading of operators are also suggested. The main criteria for assessment of the effectiveness of this scheduling work are throughput time, operator utilisation and work-in-progress. The Gantt chart technique is used to represent the schedule for both machines and operators. An outline of Petrov's heuristic rules for scheduling is described in the thesis and comparisons of the performance of the proposed rule with Petrov's rules III and IV were made in order to indicate the justification of the proposed rule. A large simulation was used to show how the rule can be applied to compare its effectiveness with Petrov. Comparisons are also shown with a Branch and Bound algorithm. Data used in the simulation was obtained from a large company fully committed to Group Technology.The conclusions drawn are that Rule Y is an improvement overexisting heuristics for Group Technology scheduling and that the inclusion of the operator schedule is a new contribution to work in this field.