Correlation functions for dynamic load balancing of cycle shops

Abstract

A cycle shop is a special job shop where all jobs (or processes P) obey different sequences of operations on the machines. In contrast to a flow shop, some operations can be repeated on some machines a number of times. The sequence of operations on the machines in a cycle shop can be nicely depicted by a cyclogram [1]. Figure 17.1(a) shows examples for a five-machine work cell, where the machines M1,..., M5 are linearly arranged to form a flow line [Fig. 17.1(a)]. We now insert an additional operation on an additional common machine (T) between each two consecutive operations in each process. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.