Examination of Scheduling Methods for Production Systems

Abstract

Nowadays manufacturing and service companies pay more attention to meet logistical demands. The widespread lean philosophy establishes claims to reduce production and logistic costs. The biggest cost reduction can be obtained by effective scheduling algorithms and logistics optimization. Several similarities and a close relationship can be seen between the two research areas. The aim of production scheduling can be defined as the allocation of available production resources in order to satisfy the criteria set by demands. These criteria contain a lot of logistical aspects, which also play important roles. Typically, the scheduling problem involves a set of tasks and an objective function, which aims to find a balance between early completion, stock and frequent production changeovers. Since the production processes can be diverse and unique, there are several different production models and scheduling algorithms. The aim of this article is to present and compare the nowadays applied different scheduling algorithms, with which the efficiency of production systems can be increased.