Ready-Time Scheduling with Stochastic Service Times

A frequently encountered scheduling problem is to determine simultaneously a material and job ready time and production sequence based on customer-specified due dates. Each job has a stochastic production time and a deterministic due date. The ready time is constrained in that the probability that each job will be complete by its due date must meet some minimum level of confidence. The objective in such an instance is to postpone the ready time as late as possible without violating these constraints. The steps and effort necessary to determine the maximum ready time and optimal production sequence, and cases in which this effort may be significantly reduced are presented. The resulting model is applied directly to single-facility and flow-shop production environments. Methods are shown for scheduling in a dynamic environment.