EVOLUTION OF SCHEDULING APPROACHES

摘要

This paper will briefly explore the evolution of scheduling approaches for the function of production control in industry. The basic concepts developed will be covered, then exploration of a few recent developments that are applicable to industry and which are undergoing considerable research at the present time will be discussed. It is obvious that all through the ages some form of control of production or at least the concept of the control of production has been utilized within society. However, it was not until the advent of the factory and mechanical power and the mass production of goods that formal consideration of the concept of production control really flowered. Thus, developments of formal production control started in the early 1900's as the interest in management functions and industrial engineering increased. Developments commenced for two major types of production, the job shop and the production line (flow shop), with charting and tabulation techniques. These remained the main procedures until the 1950's when interest in mathematical techniques for scheduling and sequencing of jobs became the focus of research. As computational procedures were enhanced via use of the computer, optimization procedures were researched. Though successful the large computational times required for large practical problems led researchers toward heuristic procedures. As production techniques changed research was directed in other directions, namely: study of scheduling rules, simulation techniques, the machine interference problem, scheduling of flexible manufacturing systems, just in time scheduling and lot streaming. Subsequent efforts will continue in these areas and very likely will begin consideration of the difficult problem of satisfying multiple criteria for optimization.