Production scheduling for apparel manufacturing systems

Abstract

In this paper, we model an apparel manufacturing system characterized by the co-existence of the two production lines, i.e. traditional, long lead time production line and flexible, short lead time production line. Our goal is to find strategies which decide: (i) the fraction of the total production capacity to be allocated to each individual line, and (ii) the production schedules so as to maximize the overall profits. In this problem, searching for the best solution is prohibited in view of the tremendous computing budget involved. Using ordinal optimization ideas, we obtained very encouraging results-not only have we achieved a high proportion of 'Good enough' designs but also tight profit margins compared to a pre-calculated upper bound. There is also a saving of at least 1/2000 of the computation time.