An integrated production planning and scheduling system for hybrid flowshop organizations

In this paper, a production system organized in serial shops (hybrid flowshop) is presented. A brief enumeration of the essential constraints that characterize this kind of organizations is given. Then, the objectives of a decision support system (DSS) are stated. The different elements composing this DSS are described. The DSS is composed of two main ingredients: (1) decomposition into planning and scheduling, and (2) closed loop or feedback mechanism. The approach adopted in this paper is mainly defined with respect to the decomposition ingredient. Special attention is also paid to the interaction between loading and scheduling. The feedback mechanism is done by simulation. In fact, a simulation model is developed for the whole production system taking into account all its specific characteristics. An illustrative example explains in detail the feature of the proposed DSS.