Scheduling with sequence-dependent batch setup times: planning tests for a pharmaceutic industry

摘要

In this work, we propose an approach for a real sequence-dependent batch setup times scheduling problem arising in a pharmaceutical company. A legal obligation for the pharmaceutical industry is to monitor the quality of their products during its life cycle. The development of new pharmaceutical products (medicines) leads to a high number of batches to be tested in order to accomplish with certain regulatory obligations regarding maintaining safeguards on quality and safety. The time lines are critical in this process. The problem is how to manage and schedule a number of tests, that require setups and obey to certain precedence relations, to avoid delays in the answers.