LEVEL SCHEDULING IN AN AUTOMOBILE ELECTRICAL ANCILLARY INDUSTRY

Level scheduling involves the production of products in many batches with reasonably small batch quantities during a scheduling period. The problem under study is quite complex since products have different demand rates and the product setup time is sequence-dependent. First an analysis has been carried out to identify those products for which level scheduling will be carried out. Next the sequence of manufacture of these products is determined by considering the sequence-dependent matrix and using a heuristic algorithm. A simple expression for obtaining the number of maximum possible runs (or batches) of such a sequence is presented.