Multi-cyclic flow shop scheduling: an application in multi-stage, multi-product production processes

This paper focuses primarily on multi-cyclic flow shop scheduling. Multi-cyclic scheduling is a generalization of common cycle scheduling in which the cycle time for each product is required to be an integer multiple of the base cycle time. After reviewing the literature, this paper presents an efficient heuristic procedure which generates near-optimal multi-cyclic schedules for a flow shop production environment under deterministic and stationary conditions. This heuristic accounts for all inventory costs including in-process inventory and idle time. The proposed heuristic is then implemented and tested at CONMAT Inc. CONMAT Inc. is a construction materials company based in Pennsylvania, USA. The solution procedure compared to the performance of the current production process at CONMAT proved to be very cost and time efficient.