Scheduling with priority dispatching rules and drum-buffer-rope in a recoverable manufacturing system

The development of environmentally conscious manufacturing systems has become of increasing concern. A recoverable manufacturing system is such a system and seeks to minimize waste through a variety of strategies, including remanufacturing. However, despite the growth in this type of systems, there are few established scheduling systems reported in the literature. Drum-buffer-rope has been shown to be successful in planning, scheduling and controlling remanufacturing operations, but to date there have been no formal examinations of what priority dispatching rules should be used at non-constraint work centers to best support drum-buffer-rope. This study examines a number of priority dispatching rules in combination with drum-buffer-rope under a variety of utilization levels, via a simulation model of an actual remanufacturing facility. The findings indicate that simple priority dispatching rules, such as first-in, first-out rule or earliest due-date, work best to support drum-buffer-rope, but that other factors must be considered when using drum-buffer-rope for scheduling in a remanufacturing environment with changing demand rates.