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

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