A control approach to scheduling flexibly configurable jobs with dynamic structural-logical constraints

What is it about?

We study the problem of scheduling in manufacturing environments which are dynamically configurable for supporting highly flexible individual operation compositions of the jobs. We show that such production environments yield the simultaneous process design and operation sequencing with dynamically changing hybrid structural-logical constraints. We conceptualize a model to schedule jobs in manufacturing systems when the structural-logical constraints are changing dynamically and offer the design framework of algorithmic development to obtain a tractable solution analytically within the proven axiomatic of the optimal control and mathematical optimization. We further develop an algorithm to determine the process design and operation sequencing simultaneously. The algorithm is decomposition-based and yields an approximate solution of the underlying optimization problem that is modeled by optimal control. We theoretically analyze the algorithmic complexity and apply this approach on an illustrative example. The findings suggest that our approach can be of value for modeling problems with a simultaneous process design and operation sequencing when the structural and logical constraints are dynamic and interconnected. Utilizing the outcomes of this research could also support the analysis of processing dynamics during the operations execution.

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