Hard Planning and Scheduling Problems in the Digital Factory

Production planning and scheduling with the aid of software tools in today’s manufacturing industries have become a common practice which is indispensable for providing high level customer service, and at the same time to utilize the production resources, like workforce, machine tools, raw materials, energy, etc., efficiently. To meet the new requirements, problem modeling tools, optimization techniques, and visualization of data and results have become part of the software packages. In this chapter some recent developments in problem modeling and optimization techniques applied to important and challenging industrial planning and scheduling problems are presented. We will focus on new problem areas which are still at the edge of current theoretical research, but they are motivated by practical needs. On the one hand, we will discuss project based production planning, and on the other hand, we will tackle a resource leveling problems in a machine environment. We will present the problems, some modeling and solution approaches, and various extensions and applications.