A binary integer programming model for the job shop scheduling problem

The current changes in the strategy of many companies have led to increase their product mix. In order to satisfy their customer needs, the companies have acquired newer and more advanced manufacturing resources and also they have migrated from the traditional production systems to more advanced ones like cellular manufacturing system. As a result of those changes, production scheduling has been defined as a crucial function. This function involves the accurate use of the existing resources to manufacture the jobs required, satisfying the due dates established by the customers. A reliable tool to assist the enterprises must be developed. In this work, a binary integer programming model is proposed as an alternative to deal the job shop scheduling problem. The mathematical model assigns the different sub-operations of the jobs to alternative machines to specify the production sequence and technological requirements are considered. The model minimizes the weighted tardiness where precedence relationships are satisfied. For larger instances, a metaheuristic based on the bacterium E-coli swimming strategy is proposed. A decision support systems is been developed on the top of MS Excel using Visual Basic for application which includes the tools previously mentioned.