Hybrid Flow Shop Scheduling of Automotive Parts

Abstract

Flow shop scheduling problem is a type of scheduling dealing with sequencing jobs on a set of machines in compliance with predetermined processing orders. Each production stage to be scheduled in typical flow shop scheduling contains only one machine. However, in automotive part industry, many parts are produced in sequential flow shop containing more than one machines in each production stage. This circumstance cannot apply the existing method of flow shop scheduling. The objective of this research is to schedule the production process of automotive parts. The feature production is hybrid flow shop which consists of two-stages. In each stage, there are several manufacturing machines and each machine can produce more than one product. Thus, production scheduling is a complex problem. This paper, therefore, develops mathematical model to solve the hybrid flow shop production scheduling under different constraints of each machine. The setup time and production time of each machine can be different for each part. The solution for the experimental data sets from an automotive part manufacturer reveals that the process time can be reduced by 34.29%.