Distributed scheduling of job shops

A distributed job shop scheduling algorithm has been implemented in the LAN (local area network) environment. The algorithm is a good candidate for distributed implementation since much of the computation time required for a solution is expended in distributable portions of the algorithm. A distributed processing support system (DPSS) was developed to ease the implementation of this and future distributed algorithms. Preliminary results indicate considerable potential for reducing the computation time. Additional portions of the algorithm may be distributed to improve the results, and streamlining of the underlying communication mechanism of DPSS is underway