Exploring a multicriteria approach to production scheduling

A current problem in production scheduling is related to the multi-criteria nature of the task. No matter how effective a heuristic or algorithm is, there remains a need to use human judgement to find a balance between an organization’s conflicting objectives, such as meeting due-dates and minimizing work-in-progress. The problem is that heuristics do not have convenient input parameters that relate to thse organizational objectives. This paper introduces the concept of a ‘control mechanism’ that would allow the scheduler to direct the search for a schedule on the basis of preferences with respect to multiple performance criteria. The feasibility of such a system is dependent on there being a predictable relationship between the input parameters of the scheduling heuristic and the performance measures. The paper describes a prototype Visual Interactive implementation of the proposed system, presents the results of some initial experimental work, which indicates that the method has some potential, and comments on potentially fruitful areas for further research.