Scheduling problems

Although recent methods used for designing production systems tend to reduce the size of some scheduling problems by dividing production systems into elementary flexible cells, the diversity, the complexity and the existence in the industrial world of scheduling problems remain very important. The scientific literature is filled with papers on the subject with some very concentrated points upon particular problems or methods. This paper is a state of the art written by eleven French researchers. It tries to present the whole domain in a pedagogic form and to make the reader take advantage of the peculiar experience of each writer. This explains the development more important of some parts while other aspects are only recalled with references to complementary specific surveys or papers.