Plenary Lecture
Excel Workbook for Convenient Scheduling of Job-Shop Production Projects
Professor Madalin Catana
Department of Machine Manufacturing Technology
Faculty of Engineering and Management of Technological Systems
University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest
ROMANIA
E-mail: mg_catana@yahoo.com
Abstract: In manufacturing companies, scheduling is a decision-making process for allocating and timing of production jobs to processing resources so that one or more scheduling objectives to be met. The result of scheduling decision is a short-term schedule that states the time each operation of production jobs starts and finishes on allotted resource of production facility. If the production jobs use facility resources in a different order during the same time period, a job-shop scheduling situation does exist. To cope with complicated, time- and resource-constrained job-shop scheduling situations, project scheduling techniques are extensively used in practice. These techniques proved effective for job-shop scheduling problems with complex relationships between operations of jobs and with temporal limits set for the execution of operations and for the availability of processing resources. Despite that many computer-aided scheduling (CAS) systems are advocated to efficiently solve traditional job-shop scheduling problems and project scheduling problems respectively, these systems are either too costly or too functionally-limited to be widely used in production scheduling practice. The scheduling workbook that will be discussed during the lecture is a convenient CAS tool for time- and resource-constrained job-shop production projects. The design and the utilization of scheduling workbook will be described with the help of an example job-shop production project. Concluding remarks will be made on the scheduling solutions delivered by the CAS tool and on its future development.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Mădălin Catană graduated in 1991 the Faculty of Machine Manufacturing Technology from Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania. He received his Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, Romania, in 2002, with a thesis on computer-aided process structure planning and scheduling of machining and assembly processes in machine manufacturing industry. Since 1998 he is lecturer in the department of Machine Manufacturing Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Management of Technological Systems, University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest. His current research interests include manufacturing technologies, production management, modeling and simulation of manufacturing processes and systems, and CAD/CAPP/CAM technologies. He has co-authored more than 40 papers published in Romanian technical journals and proceedings of national and international conferences, and 11 academic books and laboratory guides on production engineering and management, assembly and machining technologies, and computer numerical control programming. He performed researches within 7 national research projects. At present, he is a member of Academic Association of Manufacturing Engineering, of Romanian Association for Economic Engineering, and of Bucharest-Ilfov Development Region Consortium for Education and Professional Partnership.