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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Speaker: Prof. Dr. Oliver Rose
Dresden University of Technology
Faculty of Computer Science
Institute of Applied Computer Science
Chair of Modeling and Simulation
Title: "Lessons learned from the development of a simulation-based scheduling tool"
Abstract: Over the last two years, we developed a workforce scheduling solution forcomplex assembly lines. The main objective was to make optimum use of the available workers while maximizing the number of jobs processed during a given time horizon. The workers have a large range of qualifications, the jobs have due dates, and there are several resource modes for most of the productions steps (for instance, short processing times with large number of workers or smaller processing time with fewer workers). Typical manufacturing environments where these conditions can be found are the assembly of planes, turbines, printing machines, or other large one-of-a-kind assembly outputs. Due to the huge number of constraints on scheduling in these environments, it is hard even to find a feasible schedule for theworkers. This was the main reason why we decided to start the development of a simulation-based scheduler. We are more than half way through thisdevelopment process and there are several important "lessons learned" with respect to the solution approach as such and the data and information requirements we require from our partners in industry. In this talk, I will discuss modeling issues (e.g., is it possible to develop a common model description for a variety of industries?), solution approach issues (e.g., is it possible to find a feasible solution on time?), and data/information collection issues (e.g., which tools do we need to obtain relevant data/information from our partners in industry). I will not come with answers to all the questions but we have at least some opinions due to our project experiences.
