Hv. Kher et Td. Fry, Labour flexibility and assignment policies in a job shop having incommensurable objectives, INT J PROD, 39(11), 2001, pp. 2295-2311
This study evaluates operating policies for offering a near-perfect deliver
y performance for vital customers in dual resource-constrained (DRC) job sh
op environments. Prior studies have considered this problem in machine-limi
ted settings, and shown that dispatching rules that help realise a near-per
fect delivery performance for vital customers necessarily deteriorate deliv
ery performance for other customers served by the shop. This study extends
prior work, and considers additional tools that can be used by managers in
DRC shops such as labour flexibility, and assignment rules that incorporate
customer-based information to deploy workers to departments containing hig
h-priority jobs. Results show that labour flexibility in conjunction with a
ppropriate decision rules allows for enhanced delivery performance for both
vital and normal priority customers. These results hold even under conditi
ons where 80% of the shop's workload is compromised of high-priority orders
.