A Production Scheduling Problem in the Glass-Container Industry

This work examines the problem of scheduling parallel production lines in the glass-container industry with a resource constraint imposed by the furnace melting rate and concludes that a shortest processing time based dispatching rule probably provides the most efficient operating policy.

Abstract

By means of a computer simulation we examine the problem of scheduling parallel production lines in the glass-container industry with a resource constraint imposed by the furnace melting rate. The results of the simulation model are combined with relevant aspects of scheduling theory to arrive at the conclusion that a shortest processing time based dispatching rule probably provides the most efficient operating policy.