A heuristic algorithm for the scheduling problem of parallel machines with mold constraints

This paper addresses the scheduling problem of parallel machines with mold constraints. Each machine has to load one kind of molds to process a specific job in the production environment. Because it takes lots of time to change one mold to another on a same machine for producing jobs with different types, it will be efficient to put all similar jobs together as a batch production. This way will, however, result in the total tardiness of jobs increasing due to the different due dates of jobs. This kind of problems is an NP-hard problem. In this paper, we build a model to describe the problem and present a heuristic algorithm to solve it.