Grants and Contributions:

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

Effective order sequencing and task scheduling has become a necessity for survival in today's competitivex000D
markets. Scheduling in a manufacturing environment concerns with translating released orders into jobs withx000D
associated due dates and allocating them to designated workstations. Job-shop scheduling is a multi-objectivex000D
combinatorial optimization problem. Nonetheless, the majority of scheduling algorithms are usually efficientx000D
under a given objective function rather than a combination of them. Furthermore, unforeseen events on thex000D
shop floor, such as machine break-downs along with rush/canceled orders may have a significant impact on thex000D
schedule. In order to reduce the need for major changes in the initial schedule, robustness criteria should bex000D
incorporated into scheduling models.x000D
In this project, the applicant will team up with Festo Didactic Ltd. in order to overcome the challenges thex000D
company has been recently confronted in scheduling the continuously increasing sales. The main goal is tox000D
develop a library of algorithmic procedures for robust multi-objective job-shop scheduling. The first stepx000D
towards achieving this goal would be the characterization of the specific scheduling problem via investigationx000D
of manufacturing processes corresponding to different product families. Identification of variousx000D
decision-making criteria with corresponding priorities in addition to the most pertinent sources of disruptionsx000D
will be also an essential step in the project. The new scheduling engine that is expected to be integrated intox000D
their current production planning software will incorporate a set of basic and composite dispatching rules alongx000D
with local search and metaheuristic algorithms to generate alternative schedules. Developing a discrete-eventx000D
simulation model for the purpose of assessing the performance of generated schedules would be also within thex000D
realm of this research project.x000D
The results of this project will provide essential benefits to the company in terms of manufacturing lead-timex000D
and work-in-process inventory reduction. Furthermore, the developed scheduling engine can be incorporated