Production Scheduling for the Process Industries

Chapter 6 Repetitive Scheduling Strategies

DOI: 10.4324/9781003304067-8

The primary reason that many process companies embrace the structured, repetitive strategies introduced in Chapter 3 is that these methods can unleash hidden capacity by simplifying and shortening changeovers, thus making more time available for production. The analytical determination of appropriate campaign sizes generally leads to less frequent runs of low-volume products, thus reducing the number of changeovers, and the sequencing logic puts changeovers in a pattern that reduces the number of parameters changed on each one. The reduction in the number of changeovers and the shortening of those remaining allows that time to be spent making product. For companies struggling ...