Research > Scheduling
Scheduling
Traditional
scheduling objectives include makespan reduction, overload reduction,
and throughput maximization. OTS has developed state of the
art nonsystematic techniques including squeaky wheel optimization and schedule packing
(also known as doubleback optimization) to optimize these objectives.
Squeaky Wheel Optimization (SWO)
SWO was used to acheive the best results in the world for aircraft assembly and fiber-optic cable manufacturing. A generalized version of SWO has been used in generic project management scheduling to minimize makespan and overload. We are currently working to apply SWO to the scheduling of television commercials.
ARGOS
Collaboration
with the shipbuilding industry has made it apparent that traditional
objectives are often not appropriate. In many cases, the primary
goals of scheduling is to minimize cost while maintaining robustness.
OTS has developed ARGOS, a radically new set of algorithms, to tackle these
objectives for large-scale projects. Details...
SimYard
The
development of new scheduling algorithms has lead to interesting
question concerning their effectiveness in reality. Given that
nothing ever goes exactly as planned, will the theoretical cost savings
of systems like ARGOS be acheived in the real world? To answer
this question for the shipybuilding industry, we have developed SimYard, a simulated shipyard. SimYard shows that most, but not all, of ARGOS savings will be realized. Details...
Our scheduling research has resulted in a number of commercially available products.
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