Scheduling for on-time completion in job shops using feasibility function

This article focuses on job shop type manufacturing systems where a high variety of products of different volumes are requested to be produced on a tight due date. The feasibility function (FF) is addressed in this article to schedule jobs in multi-machine random job shop, where the purpose is to minimise unit penalty by achieving a balance between the number of tardy and early jobs, and reducing the difference between the maximum and the minimum lateness of jobs. A job shop simulation model based on multi-agent architecture developed by the authors provides an environment for comparing the FF to commonly used dispatching rules. The results show the benefit of using the FF. Discussions reveal that this concept is more reliable in case of due dates with different tightness level.