Development of a Multilayer Hierarchical Scheduling Algorithm for Manufacturing Systems with Identical Machines

This paper deals with the problem of scheduling dependent tasks with release time, deadline and due time on identical parallel machines. Based on decomposition-coordination methodology in large scale systems theory and Lagrangian relaxation technique, a multilayer hierarchical scheduling algorithm is presented. By making the most of structural properties of the precedence graph of partial ordering task set and introducing the concept of "feasible start time interval ", the proposed algorithm can be used for solving the scheduling problem under study effectively.