The objective of this research is to develop heuristic procedures to minimize the maximum total weighted tardiness on parallel identical machines with two sequence dependent setup time cases. For each of the two cases this dissertation proposes an eff...
The objective of this research is to develop heuristic procedures to minimize the maximum total weighted tardiness on parallel identical machines with two sequence dependent setup time cases. For each of the two cases this dissertation proposes an efficient heuristic that minimize the total weighted tardiness when a set of tasks with known processing times, due dates, weights and setup times are to be assigned on parallel machines. Those heuristic are developed to be used in industrial situations, in particular the algorithm best fits in the scheduling of the module process in TFT-LCD manufacturing plants.
Among the developed two, the first heuristic places its focus on the problem with family setup times and parallel machines. In the problem jobs are classified into different families where machine tools spends a long setup time when they switch a processing job family to another family type. Jobs in the same have the same processing time. A two-phase heuristic is presented to minimize total weighted tardiness. In the first phase, the time horizon in the scope is divided into intervals with equal length and the jobs whose due date belongs the same interval division are grouped together. Starting from the most early group, jobs in a group are sequenced by the index calculated by the Apparent Tardiness Cost with Setup(ATCS) rule. The sequence of jobs then is improved upon through use of a proposed Tabu Search(TS) algorithm. In the second phase, jobs are allocated to machines using Threshold value and Look-ahead parameter, and these are also devised for this particular problem.
The second heuristic is developed for the same problem with the first one but an exception is it has sequence dependent setup times and no family setup time. In the heuristic, jobs are first listed by due dates and grouped into given number of clusters. Clusters are formed by the proximity of due dates of jobs. Then a TS algorithm is applied to interchange job positions in intra and inter clusters. A finalized sequence of jobs emerged after the improvement by the proposed TS. Jobs are then allocated to machines by the considering of due date and setup types.
We also present some comprehensive simulation results of the proposed methods and compare these with the ATCS and RHP algorithms. The results showed the proposed methods in most cases outperform ATCS and RHP in terms of computation time and solution quality.