Optimizing the Scheduling Method for the Metal Plate Production Process

This research is performed at Voortman Steel Group in Rijssen focussing on the metal plate production process at clients of Voortman. The current production schedule is not efficient in terms of lead times and inventory levels. This research aims to find a more efficient way to schedule this process. From contextualizing the problem and studying literature, a solution method is created. This solution consists of testing dispatching rules in a flexible flow shop environment in which stages can be skipped. These experiments are run in a Python tool. The research showed that the apparent tardiness cost (ATC) rule performs the best from a selection of dispatching rules. Furthermore, combinations of multiple dispatching rules are tested in this research, such as a combination of shortest processing time and minimal slack.