ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS IN BATCH-PRODUCTION SCHEDULING

Increasingly strict environment regulations stimulate the adoption of clean technologies and materials recycling in the process industry. Th e emphasis is now on improving process efficiency, minimising effluent s and optimising waste treatment and disposal practices to ensure comp liance with discharge and disposal legislation. Some of the waste is c onsequence of process inefficiency, as occurs with part of the product changeover waste. This paper refers to the product changeover waste w hich is processing-sequence dependent. A procedure for reducing the am ount of this waste is proposed. It is based on the generation of non p ermutation schedules, where the order in which the products are proces sed may be different in all the recipe stages, and passing of products between stages is allowed.