Job sequencing rules for minimizing the expected makespan in flexible machines

✍ Scribed by Amiya K. Chakravarty; Nagraj Balakrishnan

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 863 KB
• Volume: 96
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0377-2217
• DOI: 10.1016/s0377-2217(96)00070-7

✦ Synopsis

We consider scheduling of a deteriorating flexible machine that is capable of processing a number of diverse jobs with negligible setup times between jobs. Specifically, we develop rules for sequencing N jobs on such a machine such that its expected makespan (sum of all job processing times and machine down-time) is minimized. Using the Weibull distribution to characterize machine failures in our model, we permit different jobs to contribute to machine deterioration (and hence its failure) at different failure rates, and do not require these rates to remain constant with machine-use time. We validate the effectiveness of these job sequencing rules for different cases, using extensive simulation tests.