Each job is described by its routing and the standard job attributes: re- lease date, due date and weight. The user in- terface presents information clearly and ...
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schedule. After some practice, generating and comparing multiple schedules was a straightforward task. The educational version can handle deterministic, static scheduling problems for the following environments: single machine, parallel machine, How shop, job shop, Hexible How shop, and Hexible job shop. Each job is described by its routing and the standard job attributes: release date, due date and weight. The user interface presents information clearly and behaves as one would expect. The software includes a number of useful and handy functions that go beyond the obvious, including the ability to use external scheduling algorithms for generating schedules. Because it is the educational version, the software is limited to small problems (at most 10 workcentres and 18 jobs). Many parts of the new book are similar to material in Reference [1], but the organization and scope of the two works are very diGerent. The =rst text focused on speci=c machine scheduling environments (single machine, parallel machine, How shops, job shops), and it presented theorems and proofs for both deterministic and stochastic models. This material is mostly absent from the new book. However, some familiar material is retained: an introduction to scheduling, a discussion of general purpose procedures, practical scheduling problems, the design of scheduling systems, types of scheduling systems, and an appendix on mathematical programming. The book is very focused. It discusses in depth topics related to problem formulation and solution and scheduling software. The variety of models and methods are useful for answering questions like: ‘If I =nd myself with a scheduling problem, how can I formulate it? How should I solve it? How can I build software that will collect the necessary data, solve the problem, and present the solution?’
However, traditional material on the basic single machine, parallel machine and shop scheduling problems is deliberately excluded. Unfortunately, the discussion of the role of scheduling in dynamic systems is incomplete. Chapter 6 discusses cyclic schedules for Hexible assembly systems. In this environment, it is clear how good operations scheduling improves system performance. Similarly, Chapter 7 presents the economic lot scheduling problem. Solving this determines the system performance on important performance measures such as inventory and setup costs. However, the book does not discuss the impact of operations scheduling on system-level performance measures for dynamic job shops or dynamic reservation systems. The corresponding chapters include only traditional objectives such as makespan or weighted tardiness for a schedule containing a =nite set of jobs. Moreover, the book does not mention techniques that require no schedules, such as dispatching rules, pull production control techniques such as kanban and control theoretic approaches. Although an instructor may want to supplement it with additional material on scheduling theory or scheduling in dynamic manufacturing systems, this book would be a good choice for a course on scheduling because it clearly presents much useful information, and the software is a helpful tool for learning.
SCHEDULING COMPUTER AND MANUFACTURING PRO-
which in turn is an expansion of an earlier book by four of the current authors [1]. It fairly exhaustively covers standard deterministic scheduling problems, from single machines to job shops, though the details are necessarily omitted for many problem variations. It also describes in depth several more complicated
(Second Edition). Jacek B lazewicz, Klaus H. Ecker, Erwin Pesch, GMunter Schmidt and Jan WUeglarz, Springer, Berlin, ISBN 3-540-41931-4 CESSES
The second edition of this book provides some corrections and new references to the =rst edition, Copyright ? 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
JEFFREY W. HERRMANN University of Maryland, U.S.A. (DOI: 10.1002=jos.106) REFERENCES 1. Pinedo M. Scheduling: Theory; Algorithms, and Systems. Prentice-Hall: Englewood CliGs, NJ, 1995.
J. Sched. 2002; 5:93–102
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and specialized models, such as Hexible and computer integrated manufacturing models and parallel processor computing models with communication delays. Algorithms are given in a Pascal-like pseudocode. After a brief introduction in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 gives background material on complexity theory, graphs and networks, dynamic programming, branch and bound methods, simulated annealing, tabu search, ejection chains and genetic algorithms. Though this material is meant to be self-contained, much would be hard to understand without prior exposure. Chapter 3 then provides an overview of classical scheduling models, and the standard three-=eld notation for classifying them. The book would have been better motivated if Chapters 2 and 3 had been reversed, or better yet, interleaved. Then each of the background topics could have been motivated by a particular scheduling problem example. Chapters 4, 5, 7 and 8 describe in detail the standard scheduling models of one processor (Chapter 4), parallel processors (5), How and open shops (7), and job shops (8). In most cases the objective is minimization of makespan, though other objectives (e.g. Howtime, earliness, tardiness, change-over costs, general costs) are discussed in some detail for the single-processor model, and minimizing Howtime and maximum lateness is discussed in the parallel-processor context. Approximation algorithms are given for How and job shops. Variations of the parallel-processor scheduling problem are considered at the end of Chapter 5 and in Chapters 6 and 9. Chapter 5 includes lot size scheduling, processors with diGering availabilities, and objectives involving the amount of processing that is un=nished when a job’s deadline occurs. Models with communication delays between processors, tasks that require multiple processors simultaneously, and tasks that are divisible and are to be processed on processors connected in a hypercube architecture are discussed in Chapter 6. Chapter 9 describes the scheduling problem in which some other resource, in addition to processors, is constrained. The resource may be discretely or continuously divisible.
Copyright ? 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Flexible manufacturing systems are discussed in Chapter 10. The models considered are: Hexible How shops with a sequence of parallel processors in tandem, dynamic job shops in which job arrival times are unknown in advance, and shops with vehicle routing. There is also a detailed case study of a batch scheduling problem associated with the cast-plate method of manufacturing acrylic glass. Chapter 11 considers computer-integrated production scheduling. The discussion is more abstract than in the rest of the book, and includes such topics as object oriented programming, expert systems, and fuzzy logic. Though it claims to be addressed to students as well as practitioners and researchers, the book would only be appropriate for advanced graduate students. There are no exercises, the writing is often awkward and ungrammatical, and better organization would be required for a student learning the material for the =rst time. For example, much of the background material (e.g. on local search techniques) that is introduced at the beginning of the book is not used until near the end, and discussions of the complexity of algorithms appear before the algorithms are described. On the other hand, students would =nd the section on the history of job shop research very interesting (though again, better English would be welcome), and there is a nice balance between giving the details for a variety of problems and methods, while describing others brieHy with appropriate pointers to the literature. The research described was mostly done in the 1980s, and the only work that has been done in the last =ve years that is included is the authors’ research. However, researchers and practitioners, especially in computer science and manufacturing, will =nd the book a useful background reference. RHONDA RIGHTER Santa Clara University; U.S.A. (DOI: 10.1002=jos.107) REFERENCES 1. Blazewicz J, Ecker K, Schmidt G, Weglarz J. Scheduling in Computer and Manufacturing Systems (2nd edn.) Springer: Berlin, 1993, 1994.
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