An Application of Tabu Search Technique in Parallel Machine Production Scheduling A Case Study of an Elastic Knitting Factory

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to improve the performance of production scheduling at an elasticknitting factory, in which Make To Order strategy (MTO) is being applied. There are 180 differentproduct types being served to customers. The factory faced with late delivery high from 16.78 % to32 % and the main reason was from ineffective of production scheduling. Moreover, the averagenumber of task per week is 70 tasks. The production scheduling is difficult as there are many factorsthat a scheduler can not take them all into account. In order to improve the performance of productionscheduling at the factory, the Tabu Search technique was then applied. A computer programmingwas developed with using the Tabu Search technique to establish production scheduling on theparallel machine environment with concerning of setup time. In addition to these, production time isalmost stable and machine available time is more than machine loading time. It was found that theprogram developed could reduce the tardy job number up to 76.49 %. Tardiness could be decreasedby 97.67 % and the time for establishing the production schedule could be reduced to 94.04 %comparing the factoryûs typical production scheduling records.

Keywords : Scheduling / Tabu Search / Parallel Machine