Job shop scheduling in an electroplating environment

As operating costs continue to escalate, management must become more aware of the importance of increased productivity through increased efficiency. Scheduling by priority loading rules is one way of contributing towards the improved operation of the job shop. A computer simulation was used to study the performance variations of scheduling with eight different priority loading rules, of a job shop in an electroplating environment. The processing set-up of the shop was unique in that various plated finishes were obtained on various base-metals from a single system in which the processing tanks were physically arranged in a single line in series, and each base-metal-finish combination followed a specific pre-determined processing route. The plating job shop environment described, is shown in simplified flow chart form in Figure 1. The work to be processed was placed on racks and subsequently on to a movable bar before being transferred between the various processing tanks using automatically programmed travelling hoists. For our purposes, this system can process any one of the following base metal-finish combinations: Base metal finish (i) Zinc-brass (ii) Zinc-chrome (iii) Steel-brass (iv) Steel-chrome