Minimizing WIP over a Rolling Horizon in a Job Shop

Abstract

In this paper, a job shop scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing work in process (WIP) subject to meeting due dates constraints is evaluated in a rolling horizon setting. An iterative-adaptive deterministic simulation-based procedure is first used to obtain a feasible solution. This procedure, the Virtual Factory, has been shown to provide near-optimal solutions to industrial-sized problems in seconds for the criterion of minimizing maximum lateness, Lmax. Then, a simulated annealing post-processing procedure is used to determine when to release jobs to minimize WIP while keeping Lmax &#8804 0.