Abstract—This paper proposes control methods in a flexible job shop in the aim of completing the jobs at predetermined times. The predetermined times can be the times when the jobs can start undergoing processing by the next production process on the production line or the times when the jobs should be delivered to the customer or the next party on the supply chain. By completing the jobs at such times, the flow of jobs or goods between production processes or supply-chain parties can be smoothed and the intermediate inventory of finished jobs or goods reduced. The proposed control methods are performed online, featuring high speed, requirement of little beforehand information, and the ability to adapt to disturbances. The methods include a dispatching rule which sorts the jobs based on the forecast waiting time of each job and a decision making process which gives priority to the jobs which are waiting for the processing of their final operations. Computer simulations are conducted using the data of a real factory and the results show that the methods are higher in performance than the existing methods for the objective.
Index Terms—Flexible job shop, online production control, industrial case study.
Wei Weng and Shigeru Fujimura are with the Graduate School of Information, Production and Systems, Waseda University, Fukuoka808-0135, Japan (e-mail: wengwei@toki.waseda.jp).
Cite: Wei Weng and Shigeru Fujimura, "Control Methods to Complete Jobs at Desired Times," International Journal of Information and Electronics Engineering vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 907-915, 2012.