HEURISTICS FOR OPERATOR SCHEDULING IN GROUP TECHNOLOGY CELLS

We devised heuristic approaches for operator scheduling in manned Grou ped Technology (GT) cells. The heuristic approach consists of (1) Cycl e Switching Rules (CSR) to deal with production environments covering a longer decision horizon, and (2) Dynamic Scheduling Rules (DSR) to d eal with environments covering a shorter decision horizon. They differ in information requirements and decision horizons. In simulation expe riments, we show that there is a predictable trade-off between the qua lity of the resulting schedule and the information content of heuristi cs used.