A multi-objective production scheduling case study solved by simulated annealing

During several decades, research in production scheduling mainly concerns a single criterion to optimize. However, the analysis of the performance of a schedule often involves more than one aspect and therefore requires multi-objective analysis. Such situation appears in the real case study considered here. This paper deals with a production scheduling problem in a flexible (or hybrid) job-shop with particular constraints: batch production; existence of two steps: production of several sub-products followed by the assembly of the final product; possible overlaps for the processing periods of two successive operations of a same job. At the end of the production step, different objectives should be considered simultaneously, among the makespan, the mean completion time, the maximal tardiness, the mean tardiness.