*********************************
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
*********************************
Unrelated parallel machine scheduling problems have been well studied for several single objective cases under deterministic processing conditions. While these problems are adequate for some manufacturing environments there are situations where multiple objectives need to be considered. We report on a case for a Japanese printed wiring board manufacturer's drilling operation, which is measured on five key performance objectives and which is subject to processing time variability and random equipment breakdowns (usually in the form of jams). This research presents and evaluates an optimization approach against three dispatching heuristics to determine how these different scheduling approaches are impacted by processing time variability and equipment breakdowns and to determine which perform best under various levels of uncertainty.
