A Study of the Optimum Bucket Size for Master Scheduling Considering the Characteristics of Processing Time

Abstract

Today, all manufacturers have to make manufacturing lead time as short as possible. In order to make manufacturing lead time shorter, efficient master scheduling which takes the contents of orders and capacities of production systems into consideration is required. The function of master scheduling is to plan and control the flow of order from its arrival to its completion. In this study, we focus our attention to the bucket size for master scheduling. The purpose of this study is to clarify the effect of the characteristics of processing time on the optimum bucket size, and to propose a method to determine the optimum bucket size which take processing time characteristics into consideration. As the basic research of this problem, a simple model is built. The experiments are conducted by simulation. From the results of experiments, the relationship between optimum bucket size and processing time dispersion is clarified as follows. The optimum bucket size increases linearly as processing time dispersion increases. The behavior of optimum bucket size is analyzed and an estimation equation that sets the optimum bucket size considering the characteristics of processing time is deducted. It is found that this equation gives a fairly correct estimation of optimum bucket size.