A COMBINED SCHEDULING REACTIVE SCHEDULING STRATEGY TO MINIMIZE THE EFFECT OF PROCESS OPERATIONS UNCERTAINTY IN BATCH PLANTS

This paper deals with production scheduling of multipurpose batch. che mical plants under uncertainty. The uncertainty associated with proces s operations causes that production can not be carried out exactly as scheduled. Variations in task processing times and equipment availabil ity can make the initial schedule inefficient. A combined strategy has been proposed to minimize effects due to these variations. It involve s the generation of robust schedules and then the application of a rea ctive scheduling procedure to adapt the original schedule to the new s cenario. An industrial based case study is used to show the advantages of this combined strategy.