Search and Simulation Selection of a Job-Shop Sequencing Rule

A standardized approach to selecting a simple sequencing rule for decentralized application throughout a job shop is developed and illustrated. The sequencing rule is a linear combination of decision factors, each of which is initially assigned a relative weighting. The rule is then used to determine the priority of each job in the queues, and resulting shop costs are determined by computer simulation. The coefficients of the priority function are thereafter modified by a patterned search procedure to find priority coefficients that minimize expected cost per order for a specified cost structure. The cost structure is a combination of multiple response measures for the shop. Rather than leading to a "single best rule" for all job shops, the approach is a "method for finding" a sequencing rule that performs well in any specific job shop situation.