Bi-objective dynamic control of batch processor with non-identical jobs in mould manufacturing

The heat-treatment operation in dynamic mould manufacturing often involves non-identical jobs, which allow for simultaneous processing yet with different weights and due dates. Effective production control of this operation is essential to improve the on-time delivery and decrease the manufacturing cost of the mould. This paper considers the dynamic control of a batch processor for dealing with such non-identical jobs. A new look-ahead batching strategy called MLAB (mould: look-ahead batching) has been proposed. In MLAB, the control decisions are made by the joint use of both near-future arrival information of upstream operations and workload level information of downstream operations. MLAB strategy is used to control two kinds of conflicting objectives related to the delivery and utilisation performances and finally achieve trade-off based on compromise programming method. Computational experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the MLAB strategy and show that the results are promising as compared to benchmark control strategies.