EXPLOITING SHOP-FLOOR STATUS INFORMATION TO SCHEDULE COMPLEX JOB SHOPS

We propose a heuristic for scheduling complex job shops that uses the shop floor status information available in many of today's computerize d systems to make dispatching decisions. We describe four variants of this procedure and evaluate their performance in three different shop configurations: a job shop with random routings, a reentrant flow shop , and a semiconductor testing facility. Results show that the algorith ms perform better than dispatching rules with modest increases in comp utation time. The amount of improvement obtained depends on the shop c onfiguration, with substantial improvements being obtained for the sem iconductor testing facility and reentrant flow shops.