How to Release Orders with Sequence-dependent Setup Times?

Sequence-dependent setup times can have a major influence on manufacturing systems performance. Although much investigation has been given to this issue, th e role of setup savings from the perspective of the workload control concept has hardly received attention. This paper reports a simu lation study on this matter. The study evaluates the potential fo r savings in setups, dependent on the level of workload in the s hop, for two alternative strategies, namely considering setup ti mes centrally, within the release decision or locally, within the dispatching decision. These strategies are compared and assessed on the basis of two performance measures: time in system and standard deviation of job lateness. Results show that shop c onfiguration is an important factor to choose the strategy to adopt . Moreover, the level of workload is also critical performance of the strategies.