Production scheduling problems concern the allocation of limited resources over time to perform tasks to satisfy certain criteria. Resources can be of a very different nature, for example, manpower, money, machines, tools, materials, energy, and so on. Tasks can have a variety of interpretations from machining parts in manufacturing systems up to processing information in computer systems. A task is usually | Cheng Runwei et al Production Planning and Scheduling Using Genetic Algorithms Computational Intelligence in Manufacturing Handbook Edited by Jun Wang et al Boca Raton CRC Press LLC 2001 10 Production Planning and Scheduling Using Genetic Algorithms Runwei Cheng 10 3 Ashikaga Institute of Technology 10 4 Mitsuo Gen Ashikaga Institute of Technology Introduction Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem Parallel Machine Scheduling Problem Job-Shop Scheduling Problem Multistage Process Planning Part Loading Scheduling Problem Introduction Production scheduling problems concern the allocation of limited resources over time to perform tasks to satisfy certain criteria. Resources can be of a very different nature for example manpower money machines tools materials energy and so on. Tasks can have a variety of interpretations from machining parts in manufacturing systems up to processing information in computer systems. A task is usually characterized by some factors such as ready time due date relative urgency weight processing time resource consumption and so on. Moreover a structure of a set of tasks reflecting precedence constraints among them can be defined in different ways. In addition different criteria that measure the quality of the performance of a schedule can be taken into account. Many scheduling problems from manufacturing industries are characterized as combinatorial optimization problems subject to highly complex constraints which are very difficult to solve by conventional optimization techniques. This has led to the recent interest in using genetic algorithms to address the problem. In the following sections we explain how to solve them with genetic algorithms including resource-constrained project scheduling parallel machine scheduling job-shop scheduling multistage process planning and part loading scheduling problem. Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem The problem of scheduling activities under resource
