A spread sheet-based scheduling system for a small printing company

Jorge E. Mendoza (1) , Gonzalo Mejía (2)

1 COPA - Centro de Optimización y Probabilidad Aplicada, Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial
2 PYLO - Producción y Logística, Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial

This work presents the design and implementation of a low cost scheduling tool based on Microsoft Excel, designed for a small printing company in Colombia. The company scheduling problem can be defined as a Flexible Job Shop with highly sequence dependent set up times where makespan is the objective function in a weekly planning horizon. The system architecture includes a product specifications data base, an engine which transforms the product specifications into shop floor operations, a processing times data base and a graphical user interface. The proposed scheduling tool uses Simulated Annealing (SA) for optimization purposes. An initial schedule is generated by a non-delay schedule generation algorithm combined with dispatching rules. Insertion moves on each machine were used for the generation of neighbors. The cooling schedule for the implemented SA algorithm is also well explained. In terms of the operation management the results benefit the company with reduction from hours to seconds on the time required to build a feasible schedule and the availability of new tools to generate reports of shop floor performance metrics. In terms of makespan the results suggest improvements of 40%.

Mots clés: Scheduling; Flexible Job Shop; Simulated Annealing; Decision Support Systems

Domaines: Recherche opérationnelle [math.OC]

Jorge E. Mendoza, Gonzalo Mejía. A spread sheet-based scheduling system for a small printing company. 19th International Conference on Production Research (ICPR), Jul 2007, Valparaiso, Chile. pp.CD-Rom. ⟨hal-00362661⟩