Scheduling (production processes) 1

Scheduling (production processes)

Scheduling is an important tool for manufacturing and engineering, where it can have a major impact on the
productivity of a process. In manufacturing, the purpose of scheduling is to minimize the production time and costs,
by telling a production facility when to make, with which staff, and on which equipment. Production scheduling
aims to maximize the efficiency of the operation and reduce costs.
Production scheduling tools greatly outperform older manual scheduling methods. These provide the production
scheduler with powerful graphical interfaces which can be used to visually optimize real-time work loads in various
stages of production, and pattern recognition allows the software to automatically create scheduling opportunities
which might not be apparent without this view into the data. For example, an airline might wish to minimize the
number of airport gates required for its aircraft, in order to reduce costs, and scheduling software can allow the
planners to see how this can be done, by analyzing time tables, aircraft usage, or the flow of passengers.
Companies use backward and forward scheduling to allocate plant and machinery resources, plan human resources,
plan production processes and purchase materials.
Forward scheduling is planning the tasks from the date resources become available to determine the shipping date or
the due date.
Backward scheduling is planning the tasks from the due date or required-by date to determine the start date and/or
any changes in capacity required.
The benefits of production scheduling include:
• Process change-over reduction
• Inventory reduction, leveling
• Reduced scheduling effort
• Increased production efficiency
• Labor load leveling
• Accurate delivery date quotes
• Real time information

Productivity
Productivity is the relation between quantity of inputs and quantity of output.

Inputs
Inputs are plant, labor, materials, tooling, energy and a clean environment.

Outputs
Outputs are the products produced in factories either for other factories or for the end buyer. The extent to which any
one product is produced within any one factory is governed by transaction cost.

Within the factory

The output of any one work area within the factory is an input to the next work area in that factory according to the
manufacturing process. For example the output of the cutting room is an input to the sewing room.
Scheduling (production processes) 2

For the next factory

By way of example, the output of a paper mill is an input to a print factory. The output of a petrochemicals plant is
an input to an asphalt plant, a cosmetics factory and a plastics factory.

For the end buyer

Factory output goes to the consumer via a service business such as a retailer or an asphalt paving company.

Resource allocation
Resource allocation is assigning inputs to produce output. The aim is to maximize output with given inputs or to
minimize quantity of inputs to produce required output.

Scheduling Algorithms
Production scheduling can take a significant amount of computing power if there are a large number of tasks.
Therefore a range of short-cut algorithms (heuristics) (a.k.a. dispatching rules) are used:

Stochastic Algorithms
• Economic Lot Scheduling Problem
• Economic production quantity

Heuristic Algorithms
• Modified due date scheduling heuristic
• Shifting bottleneck heuristic

Batch Production Scheduling

Background
Batch production scheduling is the practice of planning and scheduling of batch manufacturing processes. See Batch
production. Although, scheduling may apply to traditionally continuous processes, such as refining [1] [2] , it is
especially important for batch processes such as those for pharmaceutical active ingredients, biotechnology
processes and many specialty chemical processes [3] [4] . Batch production scheduling shares some concepts and
techniques with finite capacity scheduling which has been applied to many manufacturing problems [5] . The specific
issues of scheduling batch manufacturing processes have generated considerable industrial and academic interest.

Scheduling in the Batch Processing Environment

A batch process can be described in terms of a recipe which comprises a bill of materials and operating instructions
which describe how to make the product. [6] The ISA S88 batch process control standard [7] provides a framework
for describing a batch process recipe. The standard provides a procedural hierarchy for a recipe. A recipe may be
organized into a series of unit-procedures or major steps. Unit-procedures are organized into operations, and
operations may be further organized into phases.
The following text-book recipe [8] illustrates the organization.
• Charge and Mix materials A and B in a heated reactor, heat to 80C and react 4 hours to form C.
• Transfer to blending tank, add solvent D, Blend 1hour. Solid C precipitates.
• Centrifuge for 2 hours to separate C.
• Dry in a tray dryer for 1 hour.
Scheduling (production processes) 3

A simplified S88-style procedural organization of the recipe might appear as follows:

• Unit Procedure 1: Reaction
• Operation 1: Charge A & B (0.5 hours)
• Operation 3: Blend / Heat (1 hour)
• Operation 4: Hold at 80C for 4 hours
• Operation 5: Pump solution through cooler to blend tank (0.5 hours)
• Operation 5: Clean (1 hour)
• Unit Procedure 2: Blending Precipitation

• Operation 1: Receive solution from reactor

• Operation 2: Add solvent, D (0.5 hours)
• Operation 3: Blend for 2 hours
• Operation 4: Pump to centrifuge for 2 hours
• Operation 5: Clean up (1 hour)
• Unit Procedure 3: Centrifugation

• Operation 1: Centrifuge solution for 2 hours

• Operation 2: Clean
• Unit Procedure 4: Tote

• Operation 1: Receive material from centrifuge

• Operation 2: Load dryer (15 min)
• Unit Procedure 5: Dry

• Operation 1: Load
• Operation 2: Dry (1 hour)

Note that the organization here is intended to capture the entire process for scheduling. A recipe for process-control
purposes may have a more narrow scope.
Most of the constraints and restrictions described by Pinedo[9] are applicable in batch processing. The various
operations in a recipe are subject to timing or precedence constraints that describe when they start and or end with
respect to each other. Furthermore, because materials may be perishable or unstable, waiting between successive
operations may be limited or impossible. Operation durations may be fixed or they may depend on the durations of
other operations.
In addition to process equipment, batch process activities may require labor, materials, utilities and extra equipment.
Scheduling (production processes) 4

Cycle-Time Analysis
In some simple cases, an analysis of the recipe can reveal the maximum production rate and the rate limiting unit. In
the process example above if a number of batches or lots of Product C are to be produced, it is useful to calculate the
minimum time between consecutive batch starts (cycle-time). If a batch is allowed to start before the end of the prior
batch the minimum cycle-time is given by the following relationship [10] :

Where CTmin is the shortest possible cycle time for a process with M unit-procedures and τj is the total duration for
the jth unit-procedure. The unit-procedure with the maximum duration is sometimes referred to as the bottleneck.
This relationship applies when each unit-procedure has a single dedicated equipment unit.

If redundant equipment units are available for at least one unit-procedure, the minimum cycle-time becomes:

Where Nj is the number of redundant equipment for unit procedure j.

If equipment is reused within a process, the minimum cycle-time becomes more dependent on particular process
details. For example, if the drying procedure in the current example is replaced with another reaction in the reactor,
the minimum cycle time depends on the operating policy and on the relative durations of other procedures. In the
cases below, and increase in the hold time in the tote can decrease the average minimum cycle time.
Scheduling (production processes) 5

Visualization
Various charts are used to help schedulers visually manage schedules and constraints. The Gantt chart is a display
that shows activities on a horizontal bar graph in which the bars represent the time of the activity. Below is an
example of a Gantt chart for the process in the example described above.

Another time chart which also sometime called a Gantt chart[11] shows the time during which key resources, e.g.
equipment, are occupied. The previous figures show this occupancy-style Gantt chart.
Resources that are consumed on a rate basis, e.g. electrical power, steam or labor, are generally displayed as
consumption rate vs time plots.
Scheduling (production processes) 6

Algorithmic Methods
When scheduling situations become more complicated, for example when two or more processes share resources, it
may be difficult to find the best schedule. A number of common scheduling problems, including variations on the
example described above, fall into a class of problems that become very difficult to solve as their size (number of
procedures and operations) grows[12] .
A wide variety of algorithms and approaches have been applied to batch process scheduling. Early methods, which
were implemented in some MRP systems assumed infinite capacity and depended only on the batch time. Such
methods did not account for any resources would produce infeasible schedules.[13]
Mathematical programming methods involve formulating the scheduling problem as an optimization problem where
some objective, e.g. total duration, must be minimized (or maximized) subject to a series of constraints which are
generally stated as a set of inequalities and equalities. The objective and constraints may involve zero-or-one
(integer) variables as well as nonlinear relationships. An appropriate solver is applied for the resulting mixed-integer
linear or nonlinear programming (MILP/MINLP) problem. The approach is theoretically guaranteed to find an
optimal solution if one exists. The disadvantage is that the solver algorithm may take an unreasonable amount of
time. Practitioners may use problem-specific simplifications in the formulation to get faster solutions without
eliminating critical components of the scheduling model. [14]
Constraint programming is a similar approach except that the problem is formulated only as a set of constraints and
the goal is to arrive at a feasible solution rapidly. Multiple solutions are possible with this method.[15] [16]
Scheduling (production processes) 7

Notes
[1] Marcus V. Magalhaes and Nilay Shah, “Crude Oil Scheduling,” Foundations of Computer-Aided Operations (FOCAPO) 2003,pp 323-325.
[2] Zhenya Jia and Marianthi Ierapetritou, “Efficient Short-Term Scheduling of Refinery Operation Based on a Continuous Time Formulation,”
Foundations of Computer-Aided Operations (FOCAPO) 2003, pp 327-330
[3] Toumi, A., Jurgens, C., Jungo, C., MAier, B.A., Papavasileiou, V., and Petrides, D., “Design and Optimization of a Large Scale
Biopharmaceutical Facility using Process Simulation and Scheduling Tools,” Pharmaceutical Engineering (the ISPE magazine) 2010, vol 30,
no 2, pp 1-9.
[4] Papavasileiou, V., Koulouris, A., Siletti, C., and Petrides, D., “Optimize Manufacturing of Pharmaceutical Products with Process Simulation
and Production Scheduling Tools,” Chemical Engineering Research and Design (IChemE publication) 2007, vol 87, pp 1086-1097
[5] Michael Pinedo, Scheduling Theory, Algorithms, and Systems,Prentice Hall, 2002,pp 1-6.
[6] T. F. Edgar, C.L. Smith, F. G. Shinskey, G. W. Gassman, P. J. Schafbuch, T. J. McAvoy, D. E. Seborg, Process Control, Perry’s Chemical
Engineer’s Handbook, R. Perry and D. W. Green eds.,McGraw Hill, 1997,p 8-41.
[7] Charlotta Johnsson, S88 for Beginners, World Batch Forum, 2004.
[8] L.T. Biegler, I. E. Grossman and A. W. Westerberg, Systematic Methods of Chemical Process Design, Prentice Hall, 1999 p181.
[9] M. Pinedo, 2002, pp 14-22.
[10] Biegler et al. 1999, p187
[11] M. Pinedo, 2002, p430
[12] M. Pinedo, 2002, p28
[13] G. Plenert and G/ Kirchmier, 2000, pp38-41
[14] C. Mendez, J. Cerda, I. Grossman, I. Harjunkoski, M. Fahl, State of the art Review of Optimization Methods for Short Term Scheduling of
Batch Processes, Computers and Chemical Engineering, 30 (2006), pp 913-946
[15] I. Lustig, Progress in Linear and Integer Programming and Emergence of Constraint Programming, Foundations of Computer-Aided
Operations (FOCAPO) 2003, 133-151
[16] L. Zeballos and G.P. Henning, A Constraint Programming Approach to the Multi-Stage Batch Scheduling Problem, Foundations of
Computer-Aided Operations (FOCAPO), 2003, 343-346

Additional References
• Blazewicz, J., Ecker, K.H., Pesch, E., Schmidt, G. und J. Weglarz, Scheduling Computer and Manufacturing
Processes, Berlin (Springer) 2001, ISBN 3-540-41931-4
• Herrmann, Jeffrey W., editor, 2006, Handbook of Production Scheduling, Springer, New York.
• McKay, K.N., and Wiers, V.C.S., 2004, Practical Production Control: a Survival Guide for Planners and
Schedulers, J. Ross Publishing, Boca Raton, Florida. Co-published with APICS.
• Pinedo, Michael L. 2005. Planning and Scheduling in Manufacturing and Services, Springer, New York.

External links
• University of Nottingham. Inter-disciplinary Scheduling Network (http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/iol/
is-network/links.shtml) Research groups, scheduling link directories and a directory of scheduling suppliers.
• TORSCHE Scheduling Toolbox for Matlab (http://rtime.felk.cvut.cz/scheduling-toolbox) is a freely available
toolbox of scheduling and graph algorithms.
• frePPLe (http://www.frepple.com) is a toolkit for building production planning solutions.
Article Sources and Contributors 8

Article Sources and Contributors

Scheduling (production processes)  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=399586330  Contributors: Ahoerstemeier, Arul nsm, Beetstra, Bozokhun, Bwpach, Casilett,
ChristianatPP, Christoph Dürr, Datamine, DougsTech, Encyclops, EverAlert, GraemeL, Ice Cold Beer, Irontomflint, JHunterJ, Jareha, Jason237, Jeffreywherrmann, Johnwcowan, Jordiferrer,
Keyvak, Khaefner, Kozuch, Kutilm, LindsayH, Manop, Melcombe, Milleplateaux, Myleslong, Nelson50, PhilKnight, RHaworth, SiobhanHansa, Suchap, T0nsil-trouble, Takahashi9244,
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Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

File:batchProcessPFD.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:BatchProcessPFD.png  License: Public Domain  Contributors: User:Casilett
File:BatchCT1.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:BatchCT1.png  License: Public Domain  Contributors: User:Casilett
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File:BatchCT4.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:BatchCT4.png  License: Public Domain  Contributors: User:Casilett
File:batchGantt1.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:BatchGantt1.png  License: Public Domain  Contributors: User:Casilett
File:batchLabor1.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:BatchLabor1.png  License: Public Domain  Contributors: User:Casilett

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