Order review and release strategies in a job shop environment: A review and a classification

In many job shop environments production orders arrive continuously at the production system over time. If an ‘order review and release’ (ORR) technique is applied, the arrival itself does not necessarily involve the release of a job to the shop floor; in fact, the ORR activities determine which jobs have to be selectively dispatched to the shop floor and when job release is to take place, so as to improve job shop management and performances. This paper introduces a review and a classification framework of the main research work carried out to date. We have considered eight main dimensions that describe the fundamental principles, characteristics and logic of existing order review and release techniques. The classification of selected models from the specialised literature by means of the proposed framework provides a better understanding for the practitioners and, on the other hand, aims to indicate to researchers the most promising research paths.