Article ID: | iaor20022271 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 33 |
Issue: | 2 |
Start Page Number: | 131 |
End Page Number: | 136 |
Publication Date: | Feb 2001 |
Journal: | IIE Transactions |
Authors: | Hodgson Thom J., Joines Jeffrey A., Yaghubian Arman R. |
Keywords: | production, heuristics, programming: integer |
In this paper, a dry-or-buy cost model for a dry kiln scheduling problem in the furniture manufacturing industry is considered. Factory-specified due-dates for jobs, kiln availability, kiln capacity, and drying and buying costs are incorporated into an Integer-Programming model. As it may be difficult (i.e., because of due-dates, kiln availability, processing times, etc.) to meet all the due-dates, certain jobs may have to be out-sourced. The objective of the model is to minimize the total drying and buying costs while satisfying all due-dates. Because of the computational complexity of the problem, a heuristic approach is developed. Computational experience indicates that the heuristic gives high quality solutions with significant savings in time over standard IP algorithms.