Scheduling job shops with delays

Abstract

In this paper the presence of delay in a job shop is addressed. We show that delay is an important consideration in many manufacturing systems that are modelled as continuous flow processes. A heuristic control policy for a job shop with delays is then derived using theoretical arguments and approximations. The policy has a particularly simple form which can be readily extended to complex systems. Our simulation experiments on simple systems show that the control works significantly better than simple hedging point controls, especially when delays are large.