Balancing a job shop with alternative computer-aided time standards

Abstract

This research focuses on the use of computer-aided alternative time standards to balance the workload in a job shop. An example computer-aided time standards data base is presented along with the computer software to access the data base for the calculation of alternative time standards. Three machine loading algorithms are proposed to perform the workload balance, and the effectiveness of the algorithms is tested through the results of a computer simulation. It is shown that an algorithm which is unique to the literature produces results which approach the results of a complete enumeration algorithm.