Lot Streaming Technique in Job-Shop Environment

Applying lot streaming (LS) technique, a new approach is applied to determine LS conditions in job-shop scheduling problem (JSP) using genetic algorithms (GA). LS approach allows a job (lot) to be split into a number of smaller sub-jobs (sub-lots) so that successive operations of the same job can be overlapped. In this connection, the total completion time of the whole job may be shortened. The proposed approach is developed to solve two sub-problems. The first sub-problem is called LS problem in which LS conditions are determined and another sub-problem is JSP after LS conditions are determined. A number of benchmarked problems would be investigated to study the optimum LS conditions in just-in-time (JIT) environment. Experiment results suggest that the model works fairly well with different objectives and good solutions can be obtained within reasonable time frame