Developing a real-time job scheduling model for a packaging process with practical restrictions at Euroma : Using heuristics to optimize real-time scheduling of jobs with restrictions related to the food industry

In the mixing department at Euroma, a company that specialises in producing and packaging spice-based products, the availability of limited intermediate bulk container (IBC) is a bottleneck. We develop a real-time scheduling model which increases the flow of the packaging process of the mixed product. The model uses sequence-dependent set-up time with sequences of three jobs to adhere to necessary cleaning and kosher and halal restrictions. In addition to leveraging established methods, we developed a heuristic approach aimed at minimising the use of dummy jobs required for compliance with kosher and halal standards. Our experiments involving various heuristics have demonstrated that the NEH method or adjusting the old schedule, coupled with simulated annealing, yields the best performance.