Scheduling Inspection Operations subject to a Fixed Production Schedule

This paper deals with an optimization problem in which a set of inspection operations have to be processed so that a fixed production schedule is as reliable as possible. The problem is formalized as a parallel machine scheduling problem whose objective is to minimize a regular step total cost function. Mixed Integer Linear Programming models are described for the cases with and without release dates. Experimental results are reported and discussed to evaluate the performance of a standard mathematical programming solver applied to different special cases and to the general case.