A scheduling support system for non-identical parallel machine lines

This paper describes a scheduling support system for a plant where the machine environment may be modeled as non-identical parallel machine lines (NPML). That is, there are a number of stages in series with various different-capability-machines at each stage. Arriving continuously are jobs with their specific due dates, processing times and candidate processing machines. We've developed a real-time scheduling module in conjunction with a supporting production information system which supplies necessary data to the module. This scheduling module is one of the 9 modules in this system, and is composed of both a scheduling interface and a production monitoring interface. This module allows users to generate many candidate schedules by selecting their business policies. The selective arguments which are available consist of allocation costs, batch sizes and machine selection intervals. They are now being implemented at a powder metallurgy plant.