JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science 28(3): 292-310, doi: 10.3897/jucs.80750
Solving the problem of scheduling the production process based on heuristic algorithms
expand article infoDagmara Łapczyńska, Konrad Łapczyński§, Anna Burduk|, Jose Machado
‡ Faculty of Mecanical Engineering, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland§ Faculty of Computer Science and Management, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland| Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland¶ Mechanical Engineering Department, School of Engineering, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal
Open Access
Abstract

The paper deals with a production scheduling process, which is a problematic and it requires considering a lot of various factors while making the decision. Due to the specificity of the production system analysed in the practical example, the production scheduling problem was classified as a Job-shop Scheduling Problem (JSP). The production scheduling process, especially in the case of JSP, involves the analysis of a variety of data simultaneously and is well known as NP-hard problem. The research was performed in partnership with a company from the automotive industry. The production scheduling process is a task that is usually performed by process engineers. Thus, it can often be affected by mistakes of human nature e.g. habits, differences in experience and knowledge of engineers (their know-how), etc. The usage of heuristic algorithms was proposed as the solution. The chosen methods are genetic and greedy algorithms, as both of them are suitable to resolve a problem that requires analysing a lot of data. The paper presents both approaches: practical and theoretical aspects of the usefulness and effectiveness of genetic and greedy algorithms in a production scheduling process.

Keywords
production scheduling process, job-shop scheduling problem, heuristic methods, greedy algorithm, genetic algorithm