A coordinated scheduling system for customer orders scheduling problem in job shop environments

In this study a coordinated scheduling of customer orders (CSCO) system, with the purpose of improving customer order flow time, is proposed for the order-based production system in which several jobs make up a given customer order and nothing is delivered to the customer until the order is complete. The customer order flow time, which elapses between the release of the first job and the completion of the last job of an order, is crucial because it shows how long the order is in the shop and in the finished goods warehouse. Shorter customer order flow time results in less work-in-process (WIP) and finished good inventory (FGI). The CSCO includes two main decisions: (i) release the jobs and (ii) dispatch the jobs at the station level. Extensive simulation experiments were performed to compare the proposed scheduling system with the benchmark mechanisms presented in previous studies. They led to the conclusion that CSCO significantly dominates the others in two order-based job shops.