2016 A Heuristic Scheduling Algorithm for Multi-stage Job-shop Process with Crane Handling.pdfVIP

Journal of the Operations Research Society of Japan 2006, Vol. 49, No. 3, 188-201 A HEURISTIC SCHEDULING ALGORITHM FOR STEEL MAKING PROCESS WITH CRANE HANDLING Takashi Tanizaki Takayoshi Tamura Hideaki Sakai Yutaka Takahashi Taichi Imai Sumitomo Metals Nagoya Institute Kyoto University Canon System Kokura , Ltd. of Technology Solutions Inc. Received July 1, 2005; Revised March 27, 2006 Abstract There are a large number of multi-stage job-shop processes in production plants. Steel making process is also modeled as of a multi-stage job-shop process with crane handling. In the steel making process if there are two or more overhead traveling cranes for material handling in a house, it becomes very di?cult to obtain in practice an optimal or near optimal solution under consideration of restrictions concerning crane interference caused between them as well as many restrictions for each facility in the house of production plant. In this paper, we ?rst present a formulation of the scheduling problem taking account of the crane interference and then propose a heuristic algorithm to ?nd a sub-optimal solution which starts at feasible solutions and solves the problem in a ?nite time. The algorithm is characterized by restricting search space and using hybrid method of depth-?rst search and width-?rst search on an enumeration tree for crane assignment. We also discuss an availability of this algorithm using a numerical simulation for a practical steel making process. Keywords: Algoritm, logistics, manufacturing, scheduling, simulation 1. Introduction In the Japanese industry, recent customer demands require high quality, quick delivery and large variety in products. In the situation the production scheduling has become more important in order to achieve an e?cient operation, i.e. to minimize production cost and production lead-time. However in some plants it is di?cult to