A new approach to finite scheduling

This paper discusses the general framework of a methodology for material planning and operations scheduling. The methodology is designed to individually schedule customer orders according to the relative priority values assigned to each order, based on various factors including but not limited to due-dates. Resource constraints are considered during the scheduling process to ensure the feasibility of the finite production schedule, while attempting to ensure a reduced production lead time. The methodology is exemplified through test problems compared with the normal approaches. The preliminary results are quite promising, although further mathematical proofs are required to establish the potential advantages of the method in a generic form.