Production Scheduling in the Process Industries: Current Trends, Emerging Challenges and Opportunities

This paper discusses the current trends and defies associated with production scheduling, both from an industrial and academic perspective. First, the new challenges that appear in the context of globalized and competitive economies are addressed. They stem from the need of considering scheduling as a building block of the Advanced Planning Systems (APSs) that nowadays participate in Supply Chain Management (SCM) functions. They are primarily associated with business process coordination and information integration requirements. Then, main features, strengths and limitations of current academic proposals are briefly addressed. Finally, some of the reasons for the slow acceptance and modest penetration of these research results are highlighted. Thus, challenges and opportunities to be faced in order to alleviate the miscommunication of the academic and industrial worlds are pointed out.