GROUP SCHEDULING WITH INTERACTIVE COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Abstract

Petrov's method for the conventional flow-shop scheduling, which is an extension of Johnson's algorithm for the two-stage flow-shop scheduling, is applied to obtain a near-optimal solution for a large-scale scheduling based on group technology. A computational algorithm is developed. Input data into a mico-computer are : group setup times on all stages for all groups, and job processing times on all stages for all jobs. Then the solutions —Gantt chart, total production time, critical path, and starting and finishing times for all group setups and all job processings— are instantly displayed on an interactive mode. An example is shown, comparing the near-optimal solution with the optimal solution.