Analysis of a Collaborative Scheduling Model Applied in a Job Shop Manufacturing Environment

Abstract

Collaborative Manufacturing Scheduling (CMS) is not yet a properly explored decision making practice, although its potential for being currently explored, in the digital era, by combining efforts among a set of entities, either persons or machines, to jointly cooperate for solving some more or less complex scheduling problem, namely occurring in job shop manufacturing environments. In this paper, an interoperable scheduling system integrating a proposed scheduling model, along with varying kinds of solving algorithms, are put forward and analyzed through an industrial case study. The case study was decomposed in three application scenarios, for enabling the evaluation of the proposed scheduling model when envisioning the prioritization of internal–makespan-or external–number of tardy jobs-performance measures, along with a third scenario assigning a same importance or weight to both kinds of performance measures. The results obtained enabled us to realize that the weighted application scenario permitted reaching more balanced, thus a potentially more attractive global solution for the scheduling problem considered through the combination of different kinds of scheduling algorithms for the resolution of each underlying sub problem according to the proposed scheduling model. Besides, the decomposition of a global more complex scheduling problem into simpler sub-problems turns them easier to be solved through the different solving algorithms available, while further enabling to obtain a wider range of alternative schedules to be explored and evaluated. Thus, contributing to enriching the scheduling problem-solving process. A future exploration of the application in other types of manufacturing environments, namely occurring in the context of extended, networked, distributed or virtual production systems, integrating an increased and variable set of collaborating entities or factories, is also suggested.

Research on sustainable collaborative scheduling problem of multi-stage mixed flow shop for crankshaft components

“…Varela et al 9 studied the collaborative manufacturing scheduling problem. Through an industrial case study, they proposed an operational scheduling system that integrates the proposed scheduling model and various types of solution algorithms.…”

Global Resources Management: A Systematic Review and Framework Proposal for Collaborative Management of CPPS

“…Collaborative networks (CN), and global or group decision-making approaches (GDMA) are fundamental for enabling and promoting the interaction and sharing of knowledge among two or more collaborating entities [1][2][3][4][5]. Moreover, independently of sharing or not having the same goal, and/or resources, usually, interplaying entities do fall into some kind of business environment, for instance in the context of distributed or extended manufacturing systems (EMS) or agile/virtual enterprises (A/VE) [6][7][8].…”

“…A DMS problem [7,15], is one typical example of the need for using CN and GDMA for solving the scheduling problem among a set of participating companies, which may or may not further share manufacturing resources and be geographically dispersed, tending to be quite complex combinatorial optimization problems [5,15].…”

“…Instead, by considering our proposed CM framework, different kind of management P&A can be combined, along with varying types of underlying methods/algorithms, and corresponding problem-solving tools or platforms, for solving a GRM problem. Therefore, different combinations of appropriate methods and techniques, varying from applying pure mathematical optimization methods to the use of diverse types of metaheuristics, among other AI approaches, e.g., machine learning or multi-agent systems (MAS), just to mention a few, may be applied for solving the GRM problems, among others [5,7,18,19,21].…”