Applying Operations Research to Scheduling Work Cells in Manufacturing

Constant competition in the manufacturing sector forces companies to continually decrease their costs while satisfying customer needs. Nevertheless, even large companies often schedule tasks manually. This could be done more efficiently and better results could be achieved if automated. Here, we describe how the process of scheduling at one department of Johnson Electric, a leading manufacturer of electromechanical components, was improved through the application of operations research. We created an easy-to-use Excel Solver-based tool for scheduling selfdirected work cells. This tool can be used without any knowledge about mathematical programming since the objective function and constraints are added automatically in the background. Our results show that not only is the time to create schedules drastically reduced, but also the quality of the schedules is significantly improved, depending on the chosen objective function. We illustrate how fundamental knowledge in single machine scheduling can add significant practical value in manufacturing. Moreover, the work at hand shows that advances in computer interface development tools (e.g. Visual Basic for Applications) are making it possible to efficiently implement operations research concepts.