Concurrent optimization of production scheduling and facility layout planning
Production scheduling is the process of assigning tasks to machines in the manufacturing industry. One common problem in production scheduling is known as the job-shop scheduling problem (JSSP) where multiple jobs are processed on multiple machines. Each job consists of an ordered sequence of tasks and each task is processed on a specific machine. JSSP is known as a difficult problem of finding an optimal schedule and has resulted in numerous studies. In actual factories however, in addition to finding the optimal schedule there is also a need to optimize facility layout, that is the facility layout planning (FLP) of portable machines to appropriate locations where they can be used. JSSP and FLP are both key elements in maximizing the efficiency and productivity of manufacturing systems but to date they have largely been studied independently of each other. This blog is an overview of a method that we are proposing to incorporate dynamic and flexible FLP with job-shop scheduling to efficiently solve FLP-integrated JSSP.
