Multicriteria jobshop scheduling

Jobshop scheduling is one of the important classes of problems in production planning. The jobshop represents a common manufacturing environmental, in which a set of machines is used to process a stream of jobs arriving randomly. The stochastic arrival pattern of the jobs, their processing sequences, and processing times render the scheduling of jobs in a jobshop a complex and difficult task. Furthermore, the scheduling task involves multiple conflicting objectives such as the minimization of the flow time, lateness and the number of late jobs among others. In this research, we develop a framework for the efficient scheduling of jobs in the presence of these multiple objectives. The motivation for this research arises from the good performance of the interactive man-machine scheduling systems in achieving significant levels of attainment in the set of objectives, simultaneously. We develop scheduling strategies similar to the man-machine approach in this research.