A comparative analysis of scheduling techniques for a delayed task in remanufacturing

Scheduling tasks in a remanufacturing environment is complicated by uncertainty in the task length, resource availability, and raw material delivery. This thesis evaluates three scheduling policies and how they react in uncertain, lengthy delays for a single job. An industrial partner that remanufactures military equipment was used as a base case study.; To perform the analysis, a simulation was written in Visual Basic to evaluate three scheduling methods using three performance measures. The weighted shortest processing time algorithm was used to develop the original sequence and the following is a short description of each of the rescheduling methods. (1) Method 1 moves the delayed job to the end of the schedule. (2) Method 2 moves the delayed job to the first available sequence position after the delay has expired. The original sequence continues in the interim. (3) Method 3 leaves the delayed job in the sequence as originally scheduled and simply waits out the delay time. The performance measures that will aid in the analysis are the average flowtime, the weighted average flowtime, and the makespan.; This research found that Method 2 gave the best results for the each of the performance measures.