Internet-based manufacturing scheduling: Architecture and implementation

In view of today's "time-based competition," scheduling manufacturing operations using the most advanced scheduling tools has become a crucial issue for manufacturers. This can be achieved by using an Internet-based scheduling system. The main considerations in designing such a system are how to provide an effective scheduling tool without major investment, and how to ensure fast and easy access for manufacturers who have diversified computational platforms and settings. This paper presents such an Internet-based scheduling system that meets these considerations. The system is a novel combination of judiciously selected components with several architectural design options, and delivers high quality scheduling solutions in a reasonable computational time via a user friendly and secure Internet environment. The testing results are compared for different implementations of scheduling systems and results for problems of different sizes are provided.