Look-ahead strategies for controlling batch operations in industry-overview, comparison and exploration

Batching jobs in a manufacturing system is a very common policy in most industries. The main reasons for batching are avoidance of set ups and/or facilitation of material handling. Good examples of batch-wise production systems are ovens found in the aircraft industry and in semiconductor manufacturing. Starting from the early nineties much research effort has been put in constructing strategies for the dynamic control of these systems in order to reduce cycle times. Typically, these so-called look-ahead strategies base their scheduling decision on the information on a few near future product arrivals. We give a literature overview of the developed strategies, evaluate their performance and explore their relevance for practical situations by means of a simulation study.