A comparison of exhaustive and non-exhaustive group scheduling heuristics in a manufacturing cell

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Abstract
Previous group scheduling research has primarily focused on developing exhaustive two-stage heuristics in order to manage product flow through manufacturing cells. The objective of this paper is to present new, non-exhaustive heuristics and compare them with existing exhaustive heuristics in a job shop cell environment. Computer simulation is utilized to examine six non-exhaustive and six exhaustive heuristics under eight experimental conditions. The results indicate that although some non-exhaustive heuristics dominate the exhaustive heuristics on the average tardiness measure, the performance of exhaustive heuristics are generally superior to that of non-exhaustive heuristics. Furthermore, the performance of the exhaustive heuristics is more robust to the experimental factors.