Abstract
In this paper, the problem of minimising maximum completion time on a single batch processing machine is studied. A batch processing is performed on a machine which can simultaneously process several jobs as a batch. The processing time of a batch is determined by the longest processing time of jobs in the batch. The batch processing machine problem is encountered in many manufacturing systems such as burn-in operations in the semiconductor industry and heat treatment operations in the metalworking industries. Heuristics are developed by iterative decomposition of a mixed integer programming model, modified from the successive knapsack problem by Ghazvini and Dupont (Citation1998, Minimising mean flow times criteria on a single batch processing machine with non-identical jobs sizes. International Journal of Production Economics 55: 273–280) and the waste of batch clustering algorithm by Chen, Du, and Huang (Citation2011, Scheduling a batch processing machine with non-identical job sizes: a clustering perspective. International Journal of Production Research 49 (19): 5755–5778). Experimental results show that the suggested heuristics produce high-quality solutions comparable to those of previous heuristics in a reasonable computation time.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MEST) (No. 2010-0014530).