Just-in-time manufacture of home-use sewing machines using backward scheduling

This paper addresses production scheduling in a home-use sewing machine company with a centre–satellite factory system. The scheduling problem in this flow-shop type involves sequence-dependent setup time, make-to-order policy, one-piece flow processing, and a just-in-time environment, with all orders being delivered exactly on their assigned due-dates. The objective is to find a job sequence that minimizes the inventory level subject to the due-date constraint. A heuristic is proposed to find the near-optimal schedule for the problem. The performance of the heuristic is evaluated by comparing its solution with both the optimal solution and the solution obtained by the scheduling method currently used in the shop.