HOP: A software tool for production scheduling at Bridgestone/Firestone Off-The-Road

We describe the development of the Heater Optimization Program (HOP), a software tool for scheduling the curing operation at Bridgestone/Firestone Off-The-Road (BFOR). The company produces large tires for heavy off-the-road machines such as trucks, tractors and earthmoving equipment used in the construction, lumber and mining industries. The huge tires, having different priorities, are built in molds and put into heaters for the curing process. The problem is to find a feasible assignment of tires to molds and molds to heaters to achieve a maximum total priority. HOP produces about 7% more tires per shift compared to the previous manual way of developing schedules and moves the company towards its goal of quick response manufacturing with low inventories. A user-friendly Windows interface, written around our custom made optimization routines, allows for easy retrieval of the data from the company's data bases and provides for a graphical representation of the optimization results.