Distributed bottleneck control for repetitive production systems

A bottleneck control problem for general periodic job shops with blocking where each machine has an input buffer of finite capacity is investigated. The job shop considered consists of a set of workflows competing with each other for access to common machines. A distributed buffer control policy that restricts a job entering an input buffer of a local machine in a specific sequence is proposed. The conditions sufficient for design and allocation of dispatching rules are presented. The system time and the rate of machine utilization are considered as the evaluation criteria. Finally, the procedure aimed at scheduling periodic job shops is provided.