Scheduling a Flexible Machining Centre

摘要

The paper describes shopfloor scheduling techniques for a highly automated metalcutting machining center. The machining center is modelled as a generalized flowshop, i.e. a set of workstations where each workstation may contain several parallel machines. Parts visit all workstations in the same order and are processed by at most one machine in each workstation (a part may skip a workstation). Constraints on the scheduling problem are imposed by release and due dates for each job. The objective is to minimize maximal lateness. The approach presented in the paper is based on a decomposition of the generalized flowshop and uses a parallel machine scheduling algorithm as its key building block. The main contribution of the paper is the development of schedules with the objective of minimizing maximal lateness in a parallel machine system with release and due dates.