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This book is aimed at manufacturing and planning managers who struggle to bring a greater degree of stability and more effective use of assets to their operations, not realizing the degree to which production scheduling affects those objectives. It has been reported that 75% of the problems on the manufacturing floor are caused by activities outside the plant floor. Poor production scheduling strategies and systems are often the biggest contributors to the 75%. The book explains in detail that no scheduling strategy, and especially no transition to a different and better scheduling strategy, will succeed without strong commitment and guidance from senior leadership. Leadership must understand their active role in the transition, that people will feel uncomfortable and even threatened by change, and that they will need to be measured by different standards. Effective scheduling requires that following the schedule and production to plan is more important than trying to maximize each day's throughput. The book explains the advantages of a structured, regularly repeating schedule: how it can increase throughput, right-size inventory based on cycles and variabilities and therefore make it more usable, and improve customer delivery. It will explain the trade-offs between throughput, inventory, and delivery performance, how those trade-offs are actually decided in production scheduling, and how an appropriate scheduling strategy can make the trade-offs and their ramifications visible. It discusses several popular structured scheduling concepts, their similarities, and differences, to allow the readers to decide which might fit best in their environments. In addition, the authors discuss what makes an appropriate scheduling software system, and why a package designed for structured scheduling offers capabilities well beyond the Excel workbooks used by many companies, and how it offers much more design capability and ease of use than the finite scheduling modules in SAP or Oracle. Finally, the authors offer a proven roadmap for implementation, critical success factors necessary to achieve the full potential, and give examples of operations that have done this well. In addition, a guide for leaders and managers post-implementation is provided to help them fully exploit the advantages of a structured, repeating scheduling strategy.

This book is dedicated to questions of production planning and scheduling activities both in general and in semiconductor manufacturing environments, which have the characteristics of high volume and high mixture. It explores topics such as shop models, work-in-process management, the treatment of setup times, basic techniques of lot batching and splitting, lot sizing and group technology approaches, as well as rescheduling questions. A number of directions for further research is suggested in the book, and a broad collection of references is provided.

This book has resulted from the activities of IFAC TC 5.2 “Manufacturing Modelling for Management and Control”. The book offers an introduction and advanced techniques of scheduling applications to cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0 systems for larger audience. This book uncovers fundamental principles and recent developments in the theory and application of scheduling methodology to cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0.The purpose of this book is to present recent developments in scheduling in cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0 and to systemize these developments in new taxonomies and methodological principles to shape this new research domain. This book addresses the needs of both researchers and practitioners to uncover the challenges and opportunities of scheduling techniques'applications to cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0. For the first time, it comprehensively conceptualizes scheduling in cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0 systems as a new research domain. The chapters of the book are written by the leading international experts and utilize methods of operations research, industrial engineering and computer science. Such a multi-disciplinary combination is unique and comprehensively deciphers major problem taxonomies, methodologies, and applications to scheduling in cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0.

This book presents a number of efficient techniques for solving large-scale production scheduling and planning problems in process industries. The main content is supplemented by a wealth of illustrations, while case studies on large-scale industrial applications, ranging from continuous to semicontinuous and batch processes, round out the coverage.The book examines a variety of complex, real-world problems, and demonstrates solutions that are applicable to scenarios and countries around the world. Specifically, these case studies include:• the production planning of the bottling stage of a major brewery at the Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma (Heineken Int) in Mexico;• the production scheduling for multi-stage semicontinuous processes at an ice-cream production facility of Unilever in the Netherlands;• the resource-constrained production planning for the yogurt production line at the KRI KRI dairy production facility in Greece; and• the production scheduling for large-scale, multi-stage batch processes at a pharmaceutical batch plant in Germany.In addition, the book includes industrial-inspired case studies of:• the simultaneous planning of production and logistics operations considering multi-site facilities for semicontinuous processes; and• the integrated planning of production and utility systems in process industries under uncertainty.Solving Large-scale Production Scheduling and Planning in the Process Industries offers a valuable reference guide for researchers and decision-makers alike, as it shows readers how to evaluate and improve existing installations, and how to design new ones. It is also well suited as a textbook for advanced courses on production scheduling and planning in industry, as it addresses the optimization of production and logistics operations in real-world process industries.

In scheduling theory, the models that have attracted considerable attention during the last two decades allow the processing times to be variable, i.e., to be subjected to various effects that make the actual processing time of a job dependent on its location in a schedule. The impact of these effects includes, but is not limited to, deterioration and learning. Under the first type of effect, the later a job is scheduled, the longer its actual processing time becomes. In the case of learning, delaying a job will result in shorter processing times. Scheduling with Time-Changing Effects and Rate-Modifying Activities covers and advances the state-of-the-art research in this area. The book focuses on single machine and parallel machine scheduling problems to minimize either the maximum completion time or the sum of completion times of all jobs, provided that the processing times are subject to various effects. Models that describe deterioration, learning and general non-monotone effects to be considered include positional, start-time dependent, cumulative and their combinations, which cover most of the traditionally used models. The authors also consider more enhanced models in which the decision-maker may insert certain Rate-Modifying Activities (RMA) on processing machines, such as for example, maintenance or rest periods. In any case, the processing times of jobs are not only dependent on effects mentioned above but also on the place of a job in a schedule relative to an RMA. For most of the enhanced models described in the book, polynomial-time algorithms are presented which are based on similar algorithmic ideas such as reduction to linear assignment problems (in a full form or in a reduced form), discrete convexity, and controlled generation of options.

Jens Kuhpfahl analyzes the job shop scheduling problem with minimizing the total weighted tardiness as objective. First, he provides a suitable graph representation based on a disjunctive graph formulation. Second, several key components of local search procedures are analyzed and enhanced. The resulting outputs of these investigations contribute to the development of a new solution procedure whose performance quality leads to superior computational results.

Repetitive Project Scheduling: Theory and Methods is the first book to comprehensively, and systematically, review new methods for scheduling repetitive projects that have been developed in response to the weaknesses of the most popular method for project scheduling, the Critical Path Method (CPM). As projects with significant levels of repetitive scheduling are common in construction and engineering, especially construction of buildings with multiple stories, highways, tunnels, pipelines, power distribution networks, and so on, the book fills a much needed gap, introducing the main repetitive project scheduling methods, both comprehensively and systematically. Users will find valuable information on core methodologies, including how to identify the controlling path and controlling segment, how to convert RSM to a network model, and examples based on practical scheduling problems. - Introduces the repetitive scheduling method with analysis of the pros and cons, as well as the latest developments - Discusses the two basic theoretical topics, identifying the controlling path and transferring the RSM to a network model - Focuses on practical problems and algorithms - Provides an essential resource for researchers, managers, and engineers in the field of engineering project and construction management

This book introduces general supply chain terminology particularly for novice readers, state of the art supply chain management and optimization issues and problems in manufacturing. The book provides insights for making supply chain decisions, planning and scheduling through supply chain network. It introduces optimization problems, i.e. transportation of raw materials, products and location, inventory of plants, warehouses and retailers, faced throughout the supply chain network.

Christian A. Ullrich investigates the optimization potential of integrated supply chain scheduling approaches. Considering a company-internal supply chain, the author´s first research question is whether the results of integrating machine scheduling and vehicle routing are significantly better than those of classic decomposition approaches which break down the overall problem and solve the subproblems successively. The scope is then broadened to include the machine and transportation scheduling problems of two and more companies at consecutive supply chain stages. The last part of this dissertation addresses supply chain contracting issues.

Master all the modern project scheduling and cost control techniques you need, in one focused tutorial! Randal Wilson's Project Schedule & Cost Control isn't your typical project management guide: it's 100% focused on the specific principles, techniques, and best-practice methodologies of scheduling and cost control. Wilson illuminates key issues through the extensive use of graphs, charts, case studies, and worked examples; and calls your attention to crucial issues that'generic'PM books ignore. Coverage includes: Project structures, including differences between projects and programs, and how those differences affect costing and scheduling Initiation: how projects start, how to develop project charters and stakeholder registers, and how to manage stakeholders Planning, in depth: what costs must be addressed, and what schedule constraints must be considered Project schedule analysis: activity definition, WBS, and work packages; activity sequencing and diagramming; proven methodologies for estimating resources and activity durations; and schedule development Project cost analysis: gathering and estimating all project costs, including labor, materials, vendor bids, subcontractors, contracts, equipment, facilities, and direct/indirect costs. Budgeting via top-down, bottom-up, and activity-based methods Project monitoring and control: earned value, tracking Gantt, S-Curves, performance reviews, milestone analysis, change control systems, estimate at completion, forecasting, and much more For both project management newcomers and working project managers who need to sharpen their skills

Besides scheduling problems for single and parallel machines and shop scheduling problems the book covers advanced models involving due-dates, sequence dependent changeover times and batching. Also multiprocessor task scheduling and problems with multipurpose machines are discussed. The method used to solve these problems are linear programming, dynamic programming, branch-and-bound algorithms, and local search heuristics. Complexity results for the different classes of deterministic scheduling problems are updated and summarized. Also the references are updated.

This book presents a first attempt to systematically collect, classify and solve various continuous-time scheduling problems. The classes of problems distinguish scheduling by the number of machines and products, production constraints and performance measures. Although such classes are usually considered to be a prerogative of only combinatorial scheduling literature, the scheduling methodology suggested in this book is based on two mathematical tools - optimal control and combinatorics. Generally considered as belonging to two totally different areas of research and application, these seemingly irreconcilable tools can be integrated in a unique solution approach with the advantages of both. This new approach provides the possibility of developing effective polynomial-time algorithms to solve the generic scheduling problems. This book is aimed at a student audience - final year undergraduates as well as master and Ph.D. students, primarily in Operations Research, Management, Industrial Engineering and Control Systems. Indeed, some of the material in the book has formed part of the content of undergraduate and graduate courses taught at the Industrial Engineering Department of Tel-Aviv University, the Logistics Department of Bar-Ilan University and the Technology Management Department of Rolon Center for Technological Education, Israel. The book is also useful for practicing engineers interested in planning, scheduling and optimization methods. Since the book addresses the theory and design of computer-based scheduling algorithms, applied mathematicians and computer software specialists engaged in developing scheduling software for industrial engineering and management problems will find that the methods developed here can be embedded very efficiently in large applications.

Although several monographs and edited volumes have discussed scheduling in general, most of these works survey the field by contributing a single chapter to production systems like flow shops. Flow Shop Scheduling: Theoretical Results, Algorithms, and Applications is solely dedicated to bringing together a huge body of knowledge on the subject, along distinct design features, in order to help scholars and practitioners easily identify problems of interest. This monograph has been organized into ten distinct flow shop systems and explores their connections. The chapters cover flow shop systems including two-machine, flexible, stochastic, and more. Outside of the traditional flow shops that require a job never revisits any stage, this book also examines the reentrant flow shop, in which a job may cycle back and be reprocessed at the same station or sequence of stations, multiple times.The authors have made the material accessible to a broad readership, using simplified notation and revealing unifying concepts. The results unique to flow shop research should provide the seed for research in other areas of scheduling and in optimization in general.

The Multi-Agent Based Beam Search (MABBS) method systematically integrates four major requirements of manufacturing production - representation capability, solution quality, computation efficiency, and implementation difficulty - within a unified framework to deal with the many challenges of complex real-world production planning and scheduling problems. Multi-agent Based Beam Search for Real-time Production Scheduling and Control introduces this method, together with its software implementation and industrial applications. This book connects academic research with industrial practice, and develops a practical solution to production planning and scheduling problems.To simplify implementation, a reusable software platform is developed to build the MABBS method into a generic computation engine. This engine is integrated with a script language, called the Embedded Extensible Application Script Language (EXASL), to provide a flexible and straightforward approach to representing complex real-world problems.Adopting an in-depth yet engaging and clear approach, and avoiding confusing or complicated mathematics and formulas, this book presents simple heuristics and a user-friendly software platform for system modelling. The supporting industrial case studies provide key information for students, lecturers, and industry practitioners alike. Multi-agent Based Beam Search for Real-time Production Scheduling and Control offers insights into the complex nature of and a practical total solution to production planning and scheduling, and inspires further research and practice in this promising research area.

This book deals with the performance analysis of closed queueing networks with general processing times and finite buffer spaces. It offers a detailed introduction to the problem and a comprehensive literature review. Two approaches to the performance of closed queueing networks are presented. One is an approximate decomposition approach, while the second is the first exact approach for finite-capacity networks with general processing times. In this Markov chain approach, queueing networks are analyzed by modeling the entire system as one Markov chain. As this approach is exact, it is well-suited both as a reference quantity for approximate procedures and as extension to other queueing networks. Moreover, for the first time, the exact distribution of the time between processing starts is provided.

This book presents a unified optimal control approach to a large class of problems arising in the field of production planning and scheduling. It introduces a leading optimal flow control paradigm which results in efficient solutions for planning and scheduling problems. This book also introduces the reader to analytical and numerical methods of the maximum principle, used here as a mathematical instrument in modeling and solving production planning and scheduling problems. The book examines control of production flows rather than sequencing of distinct jobs. Methodologically, this paradigm allows us to progress from initial assumptions about a manufacturing environment, through mathematical models and construction of numerical methods, up to practical applications which prove the relevance of the theory developed here to the real world. Given a manufacturing system, the goal is to control the production, subject to given constraints, in such a way that the demands are tracked as closely as possible. The book considers a wide variety of problems encountered in actual production planning and scheduling. Among the problems are production flow sequencing and timing, capacity expansion and deterioration, subcontracting and overtime. The last chapter is entirely devoted to applications of the theory to scheduling production flows in real-life manufacturing systems. The enclosed disk provides software implementations of the developed methods with easy, convenient user interface. We aimed this book at a student audience - final year undergraduates as weIl as master and Ph. D.

​The book presents different models for the simultaneous optimization problem of capacity investment and work release rule parameterization. The overall costs are minimized either including backorder costs or considering a service level constraint. The available literature is extended with the integration of a distributed customer required lead time in addition to the actual demand distribution. Furthermore, an endogenous production lead time is introduced. Different models for make-to-order production systems with one or multiple serial processing stages are developed. Capacity investment is linked to the processing rates of the machines or to the number of the machines. Results are equations for service level, tardiness, and FGI lead time in such a production system. For special cases with M/M/1 and M/M/s queues explicit solutions of the optimization problems or optimality conditions concerning capacity investment and work release rule parameterization are provided.

Continuous casting and hot strip milling are two successive production steps in the steel industry. In her thesis Imke Mattik develops model formulations to integrate the scheduling of continuous casters and hot strip mills. Aim is to reduce the waiting times of the pre-products, called slabs, between the production steps and at the same time to reduce the energy consumption. Along with two different model formulations extensive numerical tests and comparative analyses are provided.

An increasing interest to scheduling theory can be attributed to the high level of automation of all branches of human activity. The quality of modern production essentially depends on the planning decisions taken at different stages of a production process. Moreover, while the quality of these decisions is improving, the time and flexibility requirements for decision-making are becoming more important. All this stimulates scheduling research. Started as an independent discipline in the early fifties, it now has become an important branch of operations research. In the eighties, the largest Russian publishing house for scientific literature Nauka Publishers, Moscow, issued two books by a group of Byelorussian mathematicians: Scheduling Theory. Single-Stage Systems by V. S. Tanaev, V. S. Gordon and Y. M. Shafransky (1984) and Scheduling Theory. Multi-Stage Systems by V. S. Tanaev, Y. N. Sotskov and V. A. Strusevich (1989). Originally published in Russian, these two books cover two different major problem areas of scheduling theory and can be considered as a two-volume monograph that provides a systematic and comprehensive exposition of the subject. The authors are grateful to Kluwer Academic Publishers for creating the opportunity to publish the English translations of these two books. We are indebted to M. Hazewinkel, J. K. Lenstra, A. H. G. Rinnooy Kan, D. B. Shmoys and W. Szwarc for their supporting the idea of translating the books into English.

In recent years more attention has been devoted to the computer aided scheduling problems in industries process. Computer programs are now available in order for production engineers to develop an understanding for how a decision can be taken while making the scheduling process easier to determine when, where and how to produce a set of products. Due to the discrete decisions involved, these scheduling problems have a combinatorial nature and are therefore challenging from a computational complexity standpoint. With the tools, scheduling studies can be run to simulate present industry conditions and to help with the long-range planning of new facilities for a given production plan. The tools also provide an opportunity for the production engineers to do such things as optimize the production process and apply diverse mathematical optimization techniques.

In some manufacturing systems significant setups are required to change production from one type of products to another. The setups render the manufacturing system inflexible as for reacting to changes in demand patterns, hence inventories must be maintained to guarantee an acceptable customer service. In this environment, production scheduling faces a number of problems, and this work deals with mathematical models to support the scheduling decisions. Some more background and motivation is given in the following sections, as well as in a case description in Section 1. 3. The synopsis in Section 1. 4 outlines the topics of the work. 1. 1 Motivation of the Planning Problem Consider the production of metal sheets in a rolling mill. If the width of the next type of sheets is greater than the width of the preceding type, then the roll needs a setup: during the rolling process the edges of a sheet cause grooves on the rolls'surface, thus, the surface must be polished if a greater width is run next. Sheets with a smaller width can be run directly, without a setup. Another example in which setups are sequence dependent is a line where cars are sprayed: if the color of the paint changes, the cleaning of the tools requires a setup depending on the sequence of the colors. Only a small setup may be needed for changing from a light to a dark color, but a thorough cleaning of the tools is 2 CHAPTER 1.

Let us start with the description of the purpose of this book. First we should explain how we understand its tide. In general, scheduling problems can be understood very broadly as the problems of the allocation of resources over time to perform a set of tasks. By resources we understand arbitrary means tasks compete for. They can be of a very different nature, e.g. manpower, money, processors (machines), energy, tools. Also tasks can have a variety of interpretations starting from machining parts in manu­ facturing systems up to processing information in computer systems. The same is true for task characteristics, e. g. ready times, due dates, relative urgency weights, functions describing task processing in relation to allotted resources. Moreover, a structure of a set of tasks, reflecting precedence constraints among them, can be defined in different ways. In addition, different criteria which measure the quality of the performance of a set of tasks can be taken into account.

A survey of the state of the art of deterministic resource-constrained project scheduling with time windows. General temporal constraints and several different types of limited resources are considered. A large variety of time-based, financial, and resource-based objectives - important in practice - are studied. A thorough structural analysis of the feasible region of project scheduling problems and a classification and detailed investigation of objective functions are performed, which can be exploited for developing efficient exact and heuristic solution methods. New interesting applications of project scheduling to production and operations management as well as investment projects are discussed in the second edition.

The factory scheduling problem, that of allocating machines to competing jobs in manufacturing facilities to optimize or at least improve system performance, is encountered in many different manufacturing environments. Given the competitive pressures faced by many companies in today's rapidly changing global markets, improved factory scheduling should contribute to a flrm's success. However, even though an extensive body of research on scheduling models has been in existence for at least the last three decades, most of the techniques currently in use in industry are relatively simplistic, and have not made use of this body of knowledge. In this book we describe a systematic, long-term research effort aimed at developing effective scheduling algorithms for complex manufacturing facilities. We focus on a speciflc industrial context, that of semiconductor manufacturing, and try to combine knowledge of the physical production system with the methods and results of scheduling research to develop effective approximate solution procedures for these problems. The class of methods we suggest, decomposition methods, constitute a broad family of heuristic approaches to large, NP-hard scheduling problems which can be applied in other environments in addition to those studied in this book.

Purchasing.Fabrication Assembly Distribution Figure 1.1: Multi-Level Manufacturing System for Make-to-Order Products specific resources of a type, i.e., a certain machine or a single worker, the determination of the sequence operations are processed on a ma­ chine, and the assignment of start and finish times to operations. We will modify this framework to be specifically suited for multi­ level make-to-order manufacturing systems. We assume that the facil­ ity design issue is settled, i.e., the location and the layout of the facility as well as the capacity ofthe three main resource types of the company are determined. These resource types are the engineering department, the fabrication department, and the assembly department. The engineering department is concerned with the construction of new products as well as the modification and customization of ex­ isting products. This entails the generation of engineering documents such as blue prints for manufacturing. The capacity of the engineering department is determined by the the count and qualification of engi­ neers and by the availability of construction devices such as computer aided design (CAD) systems etc.

Production planning, inventory management, quality control, and maintenance policy are critical components of the manufacturing system. The effective integration of these four components gives a manufacturing operation the competitive edge in today's global market place. Integrated Models in Production Planning, Inventory, Quality, and Maintenance provides, in one volume, the latest developments in the integration of production, quality, and maintenance models. Prominent researchers, who are actively engaged in these areas, have contributed the topical chapters focused on the most recent issues in the area. In Part I, Ben-Daya and Rahim provide an overview of the literature dealing with integrated models for production, quality, and maintenance. Directions for future research are outlined. Part II contains six chapters (chapters 2 to 6) dealing with integrated models for production and maintenance. Part III deals with integrated production/inventory and quality models in chapters 7-11. Part IV focuses on quality and maintenance integrated models and contains two chapters. Part V deals with warranty, manufacturing, and quality and contains two chapters. Part VI addresses issues related to quality and contains three chapters (chapters 16-18).

Scheduling is a resource allocation problem which exists in virtually every type of organization. Scheduling problems have produced roughly 40 years of research primarily within the OR community. This community has traditionally emphasized mathematical modeling techniques which seek exact solutions to well formulated optimization problems. While this approach produced important results, many contemporary scheduling problems are particularly difficult. Hence, over the last ten years operations researchers interested in scheduling have turned increasingly to more computer intensive and heuristic approaches. At roughly the same time, researchers in AI began to focus their methods on industrial and management science applications. The result of this confluence of fields has been a period of remarkable growth and excitement in scheduling research. Intelligent Scheduling Systems captures the results of a new wave of research at the forefront of scheduling research, of interest to researchers and practitioners alike. Presented are an array of the latest contemporary tools -- math modeling to tabu search to genetic algorithms -- that can assist in operational scheduling and solve difficult scheduling problems. The book presents the most recent research results from both operations research (OR) and artificial intelligence (AI) focusing their efforts on real scheduling problems.

Billions of dollars are tied up in the inventories of manufacturing companies which cause large (interest) costs. A small decrease of the inventory and/or production costs without reduction of the service level can increase the profit substantially. Especially in the case of scarce capacity, efficient production schedules are fundamental for short delivery time and on-time delivery which are important competitive priorities. To support decision makers by improving their manufacturing resource planning system with appropriate methods is one of the most of production planning. interesting challenges The following chapters contain new models and new solution strategies which may be helpful for decision makers and for further research in the areas of production planning and operations research. The main subject is on lotsizing and scheduling. The objectives and further characteristics of such problems can be inferred from practical need. Thus, before an outline is given, we consider the general objectives of lotsizing and scheduling and classify the most important characteristics of such problems in the following sections.

Within a project human and non-human resources are pulled together in a tempo­ raray organization in order to achieve a predefined goal (d. [20], p. 187). That is, in contrast to manufacturing management, project management is directed to an end. One major function of project management is the scheduling of the project. Project scheduling is the time-based arrangement of the activities comprising the project subject to precedence-, time-and resource-constraints (d. [4], p. 170). In the 1950's the standard methods MPM (Metra Potential Method) and CPM (Cri­ tical Path Method) were developed. Given deterministic durations and precedence­ constraints the minimum project length, time windows for the start times and critical paths can be calculated. At the same time another group of researchers developed the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) (d. [19], [73] and [90]). In contrast to MPM and CPM, random variables describe the activity durations. Based on the optimistic, most likely and pessimistic estimations of the activity durations an assumed Beta­ distribution is derived in order to calculate the distribution of the project duration, the critical events, the distribution of earliest and latest occurence of an event, the distribution of the slack of the events and the probability of exceeding a date. By the time the estimates of the distributions have been improved (d. e.g. [52] and [56]). Nevertheless, there are some points of critique concerning the estimation of the resulting distributions and probabilities (d. e.g. [48], [49] and [50]).

Scheduling and sequencing concerns the optimal allocation of scarce resources to activities over time. The project scheduling problem involves the scheduling of project activities subject to precedence and/or resource constraints. Robust Project Scheduling reviews the fundamentals of robust project scheduling through the deployment of proactive/reactive project scheduling procedures. Proactive/reactive project scheduling procedures try to cope with schedule disruptions that may occur during project execution using a three stage-process: (a) the generation of a precedence and resource feasible baseline schedule, (b) protecting the baseline schedule against disruptions that may occur during project execution, and (c) deploying a reactive scheduling procedure to repair the baseline schedule during project execution when needed. The authors elaborate on the three-stage scheduling process in this text. Chapter 2 examines Temporal scheduling, the generation of precedence feasible schedules using CPM or PERT. Chapter 3 focuses on the resource management issue and the state-of-the-art in generating baseline schedules that are not only precedence but also resource feasible. In Chapter 4, the authors focus on project scheduling under uncertainty. Procedures for protecting baseline schedules against time uncertainty are dealt with in Chapter 5. Proactive project scheduling under renewable resource uncertainty is covered in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 is devoted to a discussion of reactive scheduling procedures which can be launched when the baseline schedule breaks and needs to be repaired. Chapter 8 revisits the material discussed in previous chapters, reviews our major findings and identifies some future research areas. Robust Project Scheduling is aimed at the'informed newcomer'. Material currently dispersed over numerous research publications is brought together within a unified comprehensive framework. Recent research findings that were not yet covered in previously published survey articles are discussed in sufficient depth. This should not only allow the reader to grasp the state-of-the-art in proactive/reactive project scheduling, but should also reveal potential new directions for fruitful research.

Stochastic scheduling is in the area of production scheduling. There is a dearth of work that analyzes the variability of schedules. In a stochastic environment, in which the processing time of a job is not known with certainty, a schedule is typically analyzed based on the expected value of a performance measure. This book addresses this problem and presents algorithms to determine the variability of a schedule under various machine configurations and objective functions. It is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in manufacturing, operations management, applied mathematics, and computer science, and it is also a good reference book for practitioners. Computer software containing the algorithms is provided on an accompanying website for ease of student and user implementation.

This book focuses on planning and scheduling applications. Planning and scheduling are forms of decision-making that play an important role in most manufacturing and services industries. The planning and scheduling functions in a company typically use analytical techniques and heuristic methods to allocate its limited resources to the activities that have to be done. The application areas considered in this book are divided into manufacturing applications and services applications. The book covers five areas in manufacturing: project scheduling, job shop scheduling, scheduling of flexible assembly systems, economic lot scheduling, and planning and scheduling in supply chains. It covers four areas in services: reservations and timetabling, tournament scheduling, planning and scheduling in transportation, and workforce scheduling. At the end of each chapter, a case study or a system implementation is described in detail. Numerous examples and exercises throughout the book illustrate the material presented. The fundamentals concerning the methodologies used in the application chapters are covered in the appendices.The book comes with extra material on http://extras.springer.com that contains various sets of PowerPoint slides. The extra material also contains several planning and scheduling systems that have been developed in academia as well as generic optimization software that has been developed in industry. This book is suitable for more advanced students in industrial engineering and operations research as well as graduate students in business. Michael Pinedo is the Julius Schlesinger Professor of Operations Management in the Stern School of Business at New York University. His research interests lie in the theoretical and applied aspects of planning and scheduling. He has written numerous papers on the theory of deterministic and stochastic scheduling and has also consulted extensively in industry. He has been actively involved in the development of several large industrial planning and scheduling systems.

Scheduling is a broad research area and scheduling problems arise from several application domains (production systems, logistic, computer science, etc.). Solving scheduling problems requires tools of combinatorial optimization, exact or approximated algorithms. Flexibility is at the frontier between predictive deterministic approaches and reactive or'on-line'approaches. The purpose of flexibility is to provide one or more solutions adapted to the context of the application in order to provide the ideal solution. This book focuses on the integration of flexibility and robustness considerations in the study of scheduling problems. After considering both flexibility and robustness, it then covers various scheduling problems, treated with an emphasis on flexibility or robustness, or both.

Manufacturing has been one of the key areas that support and influence a nation's economy since the 18th century. Being the primary driving force in economic growth, manufacturing constantly serves as the foundation of and contributes to other industries with products ranging from heavy-duty machinery to hi-tech home electronics. In the past centuries, manufacturing has contributed significantly to modern civilisation and created momentum that is used to drive today's economy. Despite various revolutionary changes and innovations in the 20th century that contributed to manufacturing advancements, we are still facing new challenges when striving to achieve greater success in winning global competitions. Today, distributed manufacturing is unforeseeably coming into being due to recent business decentralisation and manufacturing outsourcing. Manufacturers are competing in a dynamic marketplace that demands short response time to changing markets and agility in production. In the 21st century, manufacturing is gradually shifting to a distributed environment with increasing dynamism. In order to win a competition, locally or globally, customer satisfaction is treated with priority. This leads to mass customisation and even more complex manufacturing processes, from shop floors to every level along manufacturing supply chains. At the same time, outsourcing has forged a multi-tier supplier structure with numerous small-- medium-sized enterprises involved, where highly-mixed products in small batch sizes are handled simultaneously in job-shop operations.

Besides scheduling problems for single and parallel machines and shop scheduling problems the book covers advanced models involving due-dates, sequence dependent changeover times and batching. Also multiprocessor task scheduling and problems with multi-purpose machines are discussed. The methods used to solve these problems are linear programming, dynamic programming, branch-and-bound algorithms, and local search heuristics. Complexity results for different classes of deterministic scheduling problems are summerized.

In this new edition of Gaining Control, the authors present best practices for optimizing control of manufacturing processes to meet business objectives. This reliable resource includes real solutions for measurable improvements in effectiveness, employee engagement, and morale. Written by leading experts, it's perfect for anyone who manages production facilities or supply chains and includes updated coverage of many new developments.

This handbook is in a sense a continuation of Scheduling Computer and Manu­ facturing Processes [1], two editions of which have received kind acceptance of a wide readership. As the previous volume, it is the result of a long lasting Ger­ man-Polish collaboration. However, due to important reasons, it has a new form. Namely, following the suggestions of the Publisher, we decided to prepare a handbook filling out a gap on the market in the area. The gap concerns a unified approach to the most important scheduling models and methods with the special emphasis put on their relevance to practical situations. Thus, in comparison with [1], the contents has been changed significantly. This concerns not only correc­ tions we have introduced, following the suggestions made by many readers (we are very grateful to all of them) and taking into account our own experience, but first of all this means that important new material has been added. It is character­ ized in Chapter 1, and, generally speaking, covers a transition from theory to ap­ plications in a wide spectrum of scheduling problems, hidependently of this, in all chapters new results have been reported and new illustrative material, includ­ ing real-world problems, has been given. We very much hope that in this way the handbook will be of interest to a much wider readership than the former volume, the fact which has been under­ lined in the title.

Master scheduling is the heartbeat of every manufacturing and distribution process. In fact, there is no more important process within manufacturing. This up-to-date'how-to'guide explains how master scheduling integrates with Lean and Six Sigma to create the perfect environment for robust control and continuous improvement. World Class Master Scheduling will help organizations establish rules of engagement and set the stage for maximum effectiveness of both Lean strategies and Six Sigma in the scheduling process. The author describes the need for cooperation with the demand side of the organization and how to achieve high-performance results. This desk reference is a must for operations managers, production supervisors, planners and schedulers, and Lean, Six Sigma and ERP practitioners and consultants.

Handbook of Production Scheduling concentrates on real-world production scheduling in factories and industrial settings. It includes industry case studies that use innovative techniques as well as academic research results that can be used to improve real-world production scheduling. Its purpose is to present scheduling principles, advanced tools, and examples of innovative scheduling systems to persons who could use this information to improve production scheduling in their own organization. The intended audience includes: production and plant managers, industrial engineers, operations research practitioners, advanced undergraduate/ graduate students and faculty studying and doing research in operations research and industrial engineering.

Scheduling and multicriteria optimisation theory have been subject, separately, to numerous studies. Since the last twenty years, multicriteria scheduling problems have been subject to a growing interest. However, a gap between multicriteria scheduling approaches and multicriteria optimisation field exits. This book is an attempt to collect the elementary of multicriteria optimisation theory and the basic models and algorithms of multicriteria scheduling. It is composed of numerous illustrations, algorithms and examples which may help the reader in understanding the presented concepts. This book covers general concepts such as Pareto optimality, complexity theory, and general method for multicriteria optimisation, as well as dedicated scheduling problems and algorithms: just-in-time scheduling, flexibility and robustness, single machine problems, parallel machine problems, shop problems, etc. The second edition contains revisions and new material.

Column Generation is an insightful overview of the state of the art in integer programming column generation and its many applications. The volume begins with'A Primer in Column Generation'which outlines the theory and ideas necessary to solve large-scale practical problems, illustrated with a variety of examples. Other chapters follow this introduction on'Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints,''Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window,''Branch-and-Price Heuristics,''Cutting Stock Problems,'each dealing with methodological aspects of the field. Three chapters deal with transportation applications:'Large-scale Models in the Airline Industry,''Robust Inventory Ship Routing by Column Generation,'and'Ship Scheduling with Recurring Visits and Visit Separation Requirements.'Production is the focus of another three chapters:'Combining Column Generation and Lagrangian Relaxation,''Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition for Job Shop Scheduling,'and'Applying Column Generation to Machine Scheduling.'The final chapter by François Vanderbeck,'Implementing Mixed Integer Column Generation,'reviews how to set-up the Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation, adapt standard MIP techniques to the column generation context (branching, preprocessing, primal heuristics), and deal with specific column generation issues (initialization, stabilization, column management strategies).

Our objectives in writing Project Scheduling: A Research Handbook are threefold: (1) Provide a unified scheme for classifying the numerous project scheduling problems occurring in practice and studied in the literature; (2) Provide a unified and up-to-date treatment of the state-of-the-art procedures developed for their solution; (3) Alert the reader to various important problems that are still in need of considerable research effort. Project Scheduling: A Research Handbook has been divided into four parts. Part I consists of three chapters on the scope and relevance of project scheduling, on the nature of project scheduling, and finally on the introduction of a unified scheme that will be used in subsequent chapters for the identification and classification of the project scheduling problems studied in this book. Part II focuses on the time analysis of project networks. Part III carries the discussion further into the crucial topic of scheduling under scarce resources. Part IV deals with robust scheduling and stochastic scheduling issues. Numerous tables and figures are used throughout the book to enhance the clarity and effectiveness of the discussions. For the interested and motivated reader, the problems at the end of each chapter should be considered as an integral part of the presentation.

This multi-author volume, containing contributions from international experts in the field, presents recent developments in project scheduling for both theory and practice. It is organized in three parts: I. Basic deterministic models; II. Special deterministic models; III. Stochastic models. A variety of approaches is presented dealing with multiple-category resource constraints, different mathematical models of activities, and various project performance measures in single and multiobjective formulation. Exact and heuristic algorithms are presented for both deterministic and stochastic project description.The volume will be of special interest to scientists, students, decision makers, executive managers, consultants and practitioners involved in systems management or operations research, in particular in business, engineering, and finance, but also in other areas of pure and applied sciences.

Developed by the author and now being employed by a number of businesses, Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) is an expansion of time-based competition, aimed at a single target with the goal of reducing lead times. The key difference between QRM and other time-based programs is that QRM covers an entire organization, from the shop floor to the office, to sales and beyond. Providing guidelines for establishing a QRM enterprise, this volume builds upon kaizen, TQM, TPM, and other practice to help organizations streamline all functions of their operation. It shows how to quickly introduce products, along with ways to rethink materials and production management.

Let us first describe the purpose of this book, starting with the explanation of its title. In general, scheduling problems can be understood very broadly as the problems of allocating resources over time to perform a set of tasks being parts of some processes, among which computational and manufacturing ones are most important. Tasks individually compete for resources which can be of a very different nature, e.g. manpower, money, processors (machines), energy, tools. The same is true for task characteristics, e.g. ready times, due dates, relative ur­ gency weights, functions describing task processing in relation to allotted re­ sources. Moreover, a structure of a set of tasks, reflecting precedence constraints among them, can be defined in different ways. In addition, different criteria which measure the quality of the performance of a set of tasks can be taken into account. It is easy to imagine that scheduling problems understood so generally ap­ pear almost everywhere in real-world situations. Of course, there are many as­ pects concerning approaches for modeling and solving these problems which are of general methodological importance. On the other hand, however, some classes of scheduling problems have their own specificity which should be taken into ac­ count. Since it is rather impossible to treat all these classes with the same atten­ tion in a framework of one book, some constraints must be put on the subject area considered. In the case of this book these constraints are as follows.