A due-date oriented scheduling heuristic for job shop cellular manufacturing system

Although having gained further insight into scheduling problems involving c ellular manufacturing systems, previous research has neglected two characte ristics that are essential for effective group scheduling: first, due-date performance focus; second, setup time savings by emphasizing constrained an d non-constrained machines. To overcome these two characteristics, we prese nt a due-date oriented scheduling heuristic algorithm for jab shop cellular manufacturing system based on Capacity Constraint Resource (CCR). The prop osed algorithm consists of four stages: (1) schedule development for CCR (D RUM), (2) CCR setup time savings to decrease mean tardiness, (3) CCR setup time savings to maximize CCR throughput, and (4) development of a hybrid sc heduling method to minimize total flowtime and the work-in-process (WIP) in ventory. Also, an illustrative example demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed method. Significance: This study has developed a due-date oriented scheduling heuri stic algorithm for job shop cellular manufacturing environments. The propos ed algorithm's strong performance indicates that our four-stage group sched uling heuristic, with its more sensitive switching procedures, can not only overcome some of the weaknesses shown by exhaustive and non-exhaustive sch eduling heuristics, but can also glean setup time savings without sacrifici ng due-date performance.