Interactive Excel-based Gantt chart schedule builder

摘要

Purpose: To present an Excel-based Gantt chart schedule builder that enables students to experiment with building schedules for single and parallel machine problems. Summary: The earliest due date rule is optimal for the scheduling problem for one machine with the objective of minimizing maximum lateness. However, not all scheduling dispatching rules have good approximation guarantees. In order to enable the process of trial and error experimentation, the article developed an Excel-based interactive Gantt chart schedule builder which complements traditional scheduling. The schedule builder first allows a user to input a specific scheduling problem example with a set number of machines, jobs, parameter values (e.g., processing times, due dates), and constraints (e.g., precedence, preemptions). Then the user can build a schedule and click a button to measure the quality of that schedule using objective functions consistent with the classic scheduling book. After seeing the quality of the schedule, the user can interactively adjust which jobs are assigned to which machines and the corresponding sequences. Further the schedule builder has additional functionality such as building algorithmically a schedule based on a selected scheduling rule. The schedule builder was tested in a Summer of 2014 in a three-credit course first homework assignment, where the students were asked four similar questions and the students were encouraged to use the builder and a preliminary assessment of the tool based on the student perception metric was performed. (23 refs.)