Production scheduling in a knitted fabric dyeing and finishing process

Abstract

Developing detailed production schedules for dyeing and finishing operations is a very difficult task that has received relatively little attention in the literature. In this paper, a scheduling procedure is presented for a knitted fabric dyeing and finishing plant that is essentially a flexible job shop with sequence-dependent setups. An existing job shop scheduling algorithm is modified to take into account the complexities of the case plant. The resulting approach based on family scheduling is tested on problems generated with case plant characteristics.

Keywords:

• Dyeing
• finishing
• production
• scheduling
• setup