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This book introduces new approaches to online scheduling based on the concept of cumulative delay, which helps managers to monitor and assess shop floor conditions, and manage schedule revisions in dynamic manufacturing environments.

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Online scheduling is recognized as the crucial decision-making process of production control at a phase of "being in production" according to the released shop floor schedule. Online scheduling can be also considered as one of key enablers to realize prompt capable-to-promise as well as available-to-promise to customers along with reducing production lead times under recent globalized competitive markets.

Online Scheduling in Manufacturing introduces new approaches to online scheduling based on a concept of cumulative delay. The cumulative delay is regarded as consolidated information of uncertainties under a dynamic environment in manufacturing and can be collected constantly without much effort at any points in time during a schedule execution. In this approach, the cumulative delay of the schedule has the important role of a criterion for making a decision whether or not a schedule revision is carried out. The cumulative delay approach to trigger schedule revisions has the following capabilities for the practical decision-making:

1. To reduce frequent schedule revisions which do not necessarily improve a current situation with much expense for its operation;

2. To avoid overreacting to disturbances dependent on strongly an individual shop floor circumstance; and

3. To simplify the monitoring process of a schedule status.

Online Scheduling in Manufacturing will be of interest to both practitioners and researchers who work in planning and scheduling in manufacturing. Readers will find the importance of when-to-revise policies during a schedule execution and their influences on scheduling results.

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Introduction

Scheduling Strategies Coping with Uncertainty

When-to-Schedule Policy Using Cumulative Delay

Cumulative Delay Based Periodic Rescheduling

Cumulative Delay Based Reactive Scheduling

Hybrid When-to-Schedule Policies with Cumulative Delay

Discussions

Conclusions

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Haruhiko Suwa is a Professor of Department of Mechanical Engineering at Setsunan University. His research is in Manufacturing Engineering and Systems Engineering.



Hiroaki Sandoh is a Professor at Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, working in the areas of Operations Research and Management Science.

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