Anticipation Optimization in Dynamic Job Shops

The flexibility present in a job shop is an important determinant of the future success of the shop, since it increases the ability to deal with the changes a job shop is faced with in a dynamic environment. The presence of idle-time in a job shop schedule contributes considerably to this flexibility. By introducing an anticipation factor that preserves idletime in the scheduling process more flexible schedules will be preferred. Here, research on the optimization of this anticipation factor, given a certain dynamic job shop environment, is presented. Our findings indicate that performance results are not very sensitive to small changes in the particulars of the anticipation factor. 1 DYNAMIC OPTIMIZATION