Efficient scheduling for energy saving for food processing industry - A case for an ice cream processing facility.

摘要

Scheduling optimization problems for the food processing industries, in general, adopted either mathematical or heuristics (or a mix of the two) methods. Mathematical methods, mostly Mixed Integer Linear Programming, give an optimal result to a problem. This method can be formulated to incorporate constraints to address energy saving in the resulting optimal schedule. Energy saving manufacturing schedules are important to any manufacturing industry not only from the financial perspective but also environmental obligation aspects. In this dissertation, a food processing scheduling problem from the literature was first modified to address distinctive factors related to production schedule over multiple weeks. Then the two energy conservation approaches, minimizing waiting time and minimizing number of machine start/stops, were adopted through constraints and variables. The results attained showed that schedules labeled optimal can be improved from the energy conservation point of views.