Look-ahead dispatching rules for scheduling manufacturing operations

Industries manufacturing a wide range of products and using multi-stage processing systems are faced with a difficult task when it comes to delivery date quotation and production scheduling. The most common decision support systems for aiding in this type of task are based on MRP systems and simulation models. The behavior of the manufacturing system workcenters is often modeled through the use of local priority rules (SPT, MS, EDD and so on). In this paper the authors present a ‘look-ahead’ dispatching rule which bases its decisions on local and global information. The rule was tested on a set random generated problem and presented the best performance in terms of mean flow time and of tardiness.