Scheduling of identical and parallel on/off production units under uncertainty in cost and demand prediction

摘要

In this paper a production system of identical and parallel production units is studied. The emphasis is on including stochasticity in the optimization. Methods for using stochastic constraints and objectives are presented an experimented with. An application of the results is scheduling of thermo-mechanical pulping (TMP) at paper mills, which, due to high electricity consumption, has a significant the cost reduction potential with optimal scheduling. It is found that the scheduling problem with uncertainty can be solved for practical cases, but its formulation requires specifying preferences that process operating personnel is rather unaccustomed to give.