Work sequencing in a manufacturing cell with limited labour constraints

This study focuses on the analysis of group scheduling heuristics in a dual-constrained, automated manufacturing cell, where labour utilization is limited to set-ups, tear-downs and loads/unloads. This scenario is realistic in today's automated manufacturing cells. The results indicate that policies for allocating labour to tasks have very little impact in such an environment. Furthermore, the performance of efficiency oriented, exhaustive, group scheduling heuristics deteriorated while the performance of the more complex, non-exhaustive heuristics improved. Thus, it is recommended that production managers use the simplest labour scheduling policy, and instead focus their efforts to activities such as job scheduling and production planning in such environments.