Lot streaming for product assembly in job shop environment

Assembly job shop scheduling problem (AJSP) is an extension of classical job shop scheduling problem (JSP). AJSP starts with JSP and appends an assembly stage to the completed jobs. Lot streaming (LS) technique is a process of splitting jobs into smaller sub-jobs such that successive operations can be overlapped. This paper combines, for the first time, LS and AJSP, extending LS applicability to both machining and assembly. To solve this complex problem, an efficient algorithm is proposed using genetic algorithms and simple dispatching rules. Experimental results suggest that equal size LS outperforms varied size LS with respect to the objective function. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.