Reducing tardy jobs by integrating process planning and scheduling functions

This paper presents a dynamic approach to reduce tardy jobs through the integration of process planning and scheduling in a batch-manufacturing environment. The developed method aims at re-generating a schedule with fewer tardy jobs, step by step, by exploring the process plan solution space of the tardy jobs. The integrated system comprises a process planning module, a scheduling module, and an integrator module. The process planning module employs an optimisation approach in which the entire plan solution space is first generated and a search algorithm is then used to find the optimal plan, while the scheduling module is based on commonly used heuristics. Based on the job tardiness information of the generated schedule, the integrator module automatically issues a modification order to the process plan solution space of the tardy jobs. The process planning and scheduling modules are then re-run to generate a new plan/schedule solution. Through this iterative process, a satisfactory schedule can be gradually achieved. The uniqueness of this approach is characterised by the flexibility of the process planning strategy, which makes full use of the plan solution space intuitively to achieve a satisfactory schedule. Several examples are presented to confirm the efficacy and the effectiveness of the developed integration system.