Group-based production scheduling for make-to-order production

In make-to-order (MTO) production, various parts from different product structures may share similar processes. However, traditional production scheduling in the MTO environment considers only similarity of due dates but little process similarity. Different from traditional scheduling, aggregating the similarities of due dates and production processes, a group-based production scheduling approach is proposed. Group-based production scheduling takes order groups as scheduling units and part groups as scheduling objects to minimize the total manufacturing lead time in a planning period. Besides, a group based matrix and a production capacity constraint estimation method are proposed for formulating scheduling constraints. To ensure the quality result, a tabu search based algorithm of production scheduling is proposed. Results of a case study reveal that the group-based method can reduce the manufacturing lead time because of the reducing of processing set-up efforts.