DETERMINATION OF COMPLETION TIMES FOR SERIAL MULTIPRODUCT PROCESSES .3. MIXED INTERMEDIATE STORAGE-SYSTEMS

A two step strategy is investigated for scheduling multiunit systems in which blocks of units have four different intermediate storage modes; unlimited or finite storage, storage only in processing units, or no holding between processing steps. The completion time procedure is combined with literature sequence selection methods to yield good schedules for this class of systems. Numerical comparisons with a branch and bound approach indicate that the approximate method yields makespans within 6% on average of the branch and bound solution, often in an order of magnitude less solution time. (Edited author abstact)