Family-based dispatching: anticipating future

Group Technology exploits similarities in product and process design to meet the diversity of customer demand in an economic way. In this paper we consider one of the implementations of this concept – family-based dispatching. Intrinsic to family-based dispatching is the grouping of similar types of products for joint processing. In this way the number of set-ups may be reduced. Consequently, lead-time performance of the shop can be improved. We extend existing rules for family-based dispatching by including data on upcoming job arrivals. Typically, this type of data resides in the minds of the operators, or is stored in a shop-floor control system.