Job sequencing and selection within workload control order release : an assessment by simulation

Thurer, Matthias and Stevenson, Mark and Qu, Ting (2016) Job sequencing and selection within workload control order release : an assessment by simulation. International Journal of Production Research, 54 (4). pp. 1061-1075. ISSN 0020-7543

Abstract

Recent research has highlighted the potential impact of pool sequencing on order release performance but it suffered from two shortcomings. First, arguably the best release solution for workload control in practice combines periodic with continuous release. Although the two types of releases serve different functions, recent work assumed the same sequencing rule should be used for both. Here, the use of different sequencing rules for periodic and continuous releases is evaluated. Using a job-shop simulation, we demonstrate that the rule applied during continuous releases has only a negligible impact on performance. Therefore, jobs can be pulled intermediately from the pool by workers using a more straightforward sequencing rule than the one applied for periodic release. Second, it was assumed that all jobs in the pool are sequenced and then a subset is selected for release. But for some load-oriented sequencing rules, the priority value used for sequencing jobs should be updated after each job selection from the pool. Our simulation results show that although this may improve load balancing at release, it does not in fact improve overall shop performance. Therefore, the greedy heuristic of first sequencing and then selecting jobs can be maintained, which allows the release decision-making process to retain its simplicity. The work has important implications for the use of sequencing rules in practice.