Abstract:

This paper is focused on MTO and ETO productions as they are usually considered as the most complicated to schedule and control, facing a lot of variability, and problems with long lead times, long setup times, and deadline achievement. According to researches a group scheduling policy was mentioned as a possible way to solve some of these problems. Using computer simulation three possible strategies to control the jobs waiting in front of the workstation to be processed are compared in this paper – FIFO, priority according to production delay and group scheduling policy. Values obtained from the simulation runs are compared in term of average lead times and deadline achievement. Results of this study confirm the benefits coming from re-grouping of the waiting jobs according to their technological similarity in case that merged batch size is under control.