Studies in a Simulated Job Shop

Abstract

The effectiveness of various scheduling or loading rules in a job shop has been widely studied through simulation, where a given shop can be subjected to alternative patterns of arrivals and processing. This study is particularly concerned with the case when arrivals are in batches, either of regular size or where the batch size is Poisson distributed, and when the batches arrive at regular time intervals, and certain empirical relationships between three loading rules are investigated. Two types of operational flexibility are examined, the first where more than one machine may perform a given operation and the second where changes in the sequence of operations are allowed, and the effect of such flexibilities on the expected job waiting time is determined. Finally, the effect of different procedures for determining due-dates for arriving jobs is investigated.