USING DETAILED SCHEDULING TO OBTAIN REALISTIC OPERATING POLICIES FOR A BATCH PROCESSING FACILITY

With many industries changing to a just-in-time manufacturing environm ent, the ability to reliably meet due dates and/or determine delivery/ promise dates is gaining importance. In order to achieve this, the abi lity to determine operating policies based on realistic production pla ns is paramount. For these policies to be reasonable, the uncertain na ture of the process must be addressed. These uncertainties include, bu t are not limited to, processing time fluctuations, equipment reliabil ity/availability, process yields, demands, and manpower changes. In th is paper we present a framework for addressing uncertainty by means of Monte Carlo sampling. This framework is not limited to a specific mod el, but results obtained show that the need of including sufficient de tail is best satisfied by a scheduling model. A number of stopping cri teria are derived, and the framework is utilized to obtain operating p olicies for two industrially-based examples.