An Efficient Heuristic Algorithm for Overhead Cranes Scheduling Operations in workshop

This paper discusses the scheduling problem for two factory cranes that move along a single track, which is one of the most important equipment in manufacturing shop. Each crane is assigned a sequence of pickups and deliveries at specified locations and the two cranes must be operated so as to avoid interference with each other. In order to minimize the makespan, we define the bottleneck crane, which takes the maximum time to complete a given set of tasks. And a mixed-integer programming model which considers various constraints related to the operations of cranes is formulated. However, this problem is NP-hard, therefore we propose a heuristic algorithm to solve this problem. Finally, a numerical experiment on a specific manufacturing plant is used to illustrate the efficiency from computational point of view.