Scheduling in a Job Shop Production System with multiple parallel Machines and multiple Products in case of Unknown Process Cycle

A job shop production system processes after set up batches of products in some specific sequences. In the modern production the product's process cycle is not always known from the beginning. The paper faces scheduling problems within a flexible production system with unknown production cycle, multiple products-machines and a multi-objective approach, aiming to minimize the makespan and to improve the machinery utilization. A metaheuritic optimization model is described and the obtained results from an industrial application are compared with the classical scheduling priority rules and with Johnson’s heuristics.