Simulation Approach for Solving Production Problems Reducing Total Processing Time

This paper presents an application of computational simulation to a production problem on unrelated parallel machines and dependent setup times, aiming at the reduction of jobs’ total processing time (makespan). The scenarios studied by Rabadi, et al. (2014) were used, along with the SIMIO simulation software, to model and conduct experiments to study the impact of a set of sequencing rules. Based on the computational study carried out, it was possible to realize that simulation is a powerful tool to support scheduling processes, as it allows to reach generally good results in a reasonable time to properly support decision-making in the resolution of production problems. These problems are highly complex and dynamically changing in nature, being usually hard to solve. Thus, simulation tools are of particular interest in this field. Moreover, as these problems are characterized by a more or less extensible set of factors, parameters and conditions, it continues to be of primer importance to further explore its resolutions, namely based on simulation tools. This study relies on the base for being used in industrial practice in the context of iFixturing Project.