Shop-floor scheduling on the batch manufacturing process using ARENA simulation

In the manufacturing industry production scheduling is one of the most important planning and scheduling issues. Simulation can help to improve the operation of manufacturing systems. In this paper we present a simulation approach on dynamic and stochastic scheduling using ARENA software. The problem studied is a system with two stations each with multiple parallel machines. The objectives of this study are to analyse the system behaviour in order to meet the following measure of performance minimum mean flow-time, maximum throughput, minimum WIP, maximum per cent for machine utilisation and minimum make-span. Five dispatching rules were implemented for scheduling.