Finite capacity scheduling with mixed duration tooling trees

Finite capacity scheduling is a research area which has much practical application and the quality of the schedules has a major impact on the delivery performance, profitiability and finance requirements of companies. This paper proposes a method of finite capacity scheduling where activities have a range of mandatory and alternative tools which can be used, and some of the less preferred tools run at a slower rate. The calculations are presented by example, and in the context of a computer program to implement the algorithms.