Design of a computerized scheduling system for best rule analysis and control

Abstract A Computerized Scheduling System (CSS) for a gear box manufacturing plant has been developed to simulate a specific manufacturing facility and to analyse conditions that identify bottlenecks during the production process. The model, based partly on practical experience and partly on theoretical work, allows the analyst to concentrate on a single entity (such as a job) and the sequence of events and activities that undergoes as it “passes through” the system. The CSS makes use of actual company data regarding individual machines and operators, and incorporates interarrival times, job types, tasks for each job, routings for the different job types and process time for each job type and specific task. Also, the model provides information on output — average total delay in queue, average number in queue, average utilization and average delay in queue. Although the resultant model was constructed for the application on hand, the principles employed can be extended to include procedures encountered in similar manufacturing environments.