TY - JOUR
T1 - An investigation of cooperative dispatching for minimising mean flowtime in a finite-buffer-capacity dynamic flowshop
AU - El-Bouri, Ahmed
AU - Nairy, Subrahmanya
PY - 2011/3/15
Y1 - 2011/3/15
N2 - Scheduling in a dynamic flowshop that receives jobs at random and unforeseen points in time has traditionally been done by using dispatching rules. This study compares the performances of leading dispatching rules with a cooperative dispatching approach, for the objective of minimising mean flowtime in a flowshop, in which the buffers that hold in-process jobs between machines have finite capacities. Cooperative dispatching employs a consultative and consensus-seeking methodology for deciding which job to dispatch next on a machine. Computational experiments using randomly generated test problems for three different utilisation (congestion) levels are carried out for 5- and 10-machine flowshops, under a wide range of buffer capacities. The results highlight the sensitivity of some of the popular dispatching rules to buffer size. In contrast, cooperative dispatching emerges as a robust method that performs consistently well across the range of buffer sizes and machine utilisations tested. The reductions in mean flowtime obtained by cooperative dispatching, in comparison to the other dispatching rules, are particularly large in flowshops that operate with very tight buffer capacities and elevated levels of congestion
AB - Scheduling in a dynamic flowshop that receives jobs at random and unforeseen points in time has traditionally been done by using dispatching rules. This study compares the performances of leading dispatching rules with a cooperative dispatching approach, for the objective of minimising mean flowtime in a flowshop, in which the buffers that hold in-process jobs between machines have finite capacities. Cooperative dispatching employs a consultative and consensus-seeking methodology for deciding which job to dispatch next on a machine. Computational experiments using randomly generated test problems for three different utilisation (congestion) levels are carried out for 5- and 10-machine flowshops, under a wide range of buffer capacities. The results highlight the sensitivity of some of the popular dispatching rules to buffer size. In contrast, cooperative dispatching emerges as a robust method that performs consistently well across the range of buffer sizes and machine utilisations tested. The reductions in mean flowtime obtained by cooperative dispatching, in comparison to the other dispatching rules, are particularly large in flowshops that operate with very tight buffer capacities and elevated levels of congestion
KW - dispatching rules
KW - dynamic scheduling
KW - finite buffer capacity
KW - flowshop
KW - mean flowtime
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U2 - 10.1080/00207540903443253
DO - 10.1080/00207540903443253
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:78650603042
SN - 0020-7543
VL - 49
SP - 1785
EP - 1800
JO - International Journal of Production Research
JF - International Journal of Production Research
IS - 6
ER -