Scheduling a flexible machining centre

This paper describes shopfloor scheduling techniques for a highly automated metal cutting machining centre. The machining centre is modelled as a generalized flowshop, i.e. a set of work stations where each work station may contain several parallel machines. Parts visit all work stations in the same order and are processed by at most one machine in each work station (a part may skip a workstation). Constraints on the scheduling problem are imposed by release and due dates for each job. The objective is to minimize maximal lateness. The approach presented in this paper, is based on a decomposition of the generalized flowshop and uses a parallel machine scheduling algorithm as its key building block. The main contribution of this paper is on the latter subject: the development of schedules with the objective to minimize maximal lateness in a parallel machine system with release and due dates.