A heuristic for adaptive production scheduling and control in flow shop production

Although research in flow shop production scheduling has been carried out for many decades, there is still a gap between theoretical research and industrial applications - especially in some manufacturing paradigms in which adaptive production control is necessary, such as in one-of-a-kind production (OKP). This paper presents an average processing time and lever (APT-LVR) heuristic, integrated with a closed-loop feedback control scheme, to achieve adaptive production scheduling and control in flow shop production. Having been implemented in a local OKP company, our APT-LVR based production scheduling and control system demonstrates a significant potential to improve the company's production efficiency and competitiveness.