A Scheduling Optimization Study in an Assembly Line of a Company in Turkey

Abstract

Scheduling of assembly lines is a very common problem which is often very hard to solve with classical scheduling approaches. In this study, we consider such an assembly line scheduling problem of an international electronics company located in Manisa, Turkey. First, we solve the scheduling problem analytically by considering four policies: Earliest Due Date, Shortest Processing Time, Critical Ratio and Nawaz Heuristic. The performance measures considered are: The makespan and average cycle time of products. Second, due to the stochastic environment of the production lines, we simulate the current system by considering stochastic processing times. Last, we integrate the analytical results of the pre-solved four scheduling policies into the simulation model to compare their performances and choose the best one.