Abstract
This paper discusses problems of production scheduling for a flow shop that consists of multiple machines and manufactures products by orders. For the scheduling system structure and the optimal capacity planning algorithm of the flow shop, two methods are proposed based on the flow shop characteristics which were analyzed in the previous report : i)Two stage planning method, ii) Equivalent flow-line method. The two stage planning method consists of a capacity planning level and a job sequencing level. In the equivalent flow-line method, the flow shop can be simplified into an equivalent flow-line which is composed of a flow control element and two time delay elements from the point of view of scheduling. Then the capacity planning for load smoothing is solved by dynamic programming using the flow control element.
