An integrated environment for planning and scheduling in flow-chop manufacturing plants

An automatic planner and scheduler is described for manufacturing plants with m machines, n jobs, and a flow-shop structure. Given a production problem, the scheduler algorithm allocates the jobs to the set of machines by minimizing the total production time. The schedule is generated by alternatively using a forward and backward allocation strategy with a rule-based criterion. The scheduler was designed to solve problems where the resources may not be available at all production instants, due to the existence of work shifts. Sufficient conditions for optimality are stated and representative simulation results are presented. The interface between the industrial production needs and the scheduler is provided by a planner, which finds the net production needs to accomplish each particular production order, and feeds that information to the scheduler module