Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

A general description of scheduling is the allocation of resources over time to perform a collection of tasks. Inx000D
literature, this critical approach to scheduling problems has been formalized as scheduling theory. Schedulingx000D
in practice, however, varies greatly between different companies with no definitive model of "real world"x000D
scheduling available to aid manufacturing industries. The lack of attention to the realities of scheduling by thex000D
research community has given the rise to the so-called ''gap" between theory and practice. Many researchersx000D
were simply optimistic that their new and improved heuristics would be embedded in a computer systems byx000D
scheduling software vendors, which would then in turn be widely used in job shops. However, most job shopx000D
style factories are still scheduling and planning the old-fashioned way using a collection of dispatching rulesx000D
that are far from being optimal. It is apparent that theoretical research in developing algorithms for schedulingx000D
has done little to improve the scheduling practice. This has resulted in many industries not having schedulingx000D
systems very tailored to their needs. The research problem identified in the collaborating industry involves thex000D
scheduling of large numbers of orders in the stamping area of the manufacturing plant. Complexity arises fromx000D
the many inter-dependencies of the manufacturing operations and their requirements. The schedulingx000D
framework and the solution methodology to be develop is a hybrid approach that combines Job-Dispatchingx000D
rules from traditional scheduling theory and Event-Scheduling/Time-Advance algorithm (ESTA) from thex000D
theory of discrete event systems simulation. Job-dispatching rule are simple to use. However, they lack thex000D
ability to handle complex operational logic and do not provide schedule. To obtain actual production schedulex000D
using these simple dispatching rules, in this research, we will apply the concept of discrete event simulation. Inx000D
doing so, the operational logic of the manufacturing systems will be modeled in a computer program. Thex000D
dispatching rules will then be executed in a simulated time using ESTA algorithm of discrete event systemsx000D
simulation to generate production schedules.