Effective Logistic Management: Integrated Scheduling of Job Processing and Job Delivery

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

This research is to investigate an integrated scheduling model that schedules jointly the processing of jobs in the processing facility and the delivery of finished jobs to customers. The integration model is motivated by interactions with industry. Although this model is very important in practice, almost no attention to date has been given in the literature to address such integration. The model involves two research fields: machine scheduling (for job processing) and vehicle routing (for job delivery). Although each of the individual areas has been extensively studied in the last three decades, no research has investigated these two areas simultaneously. This research plan is to study various problems under the integration model. The goal is to develop optimal and near optimal solution approaches to solve these problems with a large scale. Solution approaches based on the column generation method, dynamic programming, and local search will be developed. Since the problems to be investigated are new, motivated by industry applications, and more general than traditional machine scheduling and vehicle routing problems, numerous original and publishable works can be derived from the project results. From a theoretic point of view, this research will broaden the field of manufacturing and service logistics and scheduling, and contribute new techniques to the solution literature. From a practical point of view, the research results should have a great applicability in many manufacturing and service companies for maximizing customer satisfaction at minimal cost. In addition, it will have a great impact on our educational programs.