Ranking of sequencing rules in a job shop scheduling problem with preference selection index approach

Abstract

Scheduling different jobs in an appropriate sequence are very important in manufacturing industries due to the influence of conflicting criteria. It becomes difficult to sequence the jobs as the job number increases due to numerous computations involved. In this article, six jobs are considered to be treated on a machine one by one. Seven different priority sequencing rules provide seven different sequencing options for the jobs which are assessed using a set of nine criteria. Preference selection index (PSI) approach, a multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) technique is proposed to rank them from best to worst. The PSI approach, unlike other MCDM methods, does not require to find the relative significance of the criteria, which reduces work of finding weights of criteria hence is a very easy and effective tool for decision making. A benchmark problem from the previous literature is considered and solved using the PSI approach and the obtained results are found to be correct.