Production scheduling on multiple lines with shared resources

In the research area of scheduling, many simulation models were developed to test solutions, generally establish by optimization algorithms or heuristics. In the paper is presented is a simulation model for scheduling problems of orders in the case of a multiple production lines with shared resources. The studied problem deals with the management of a specific number of work teams available for many operations, with skills to consider in the assignment of the workloads. Moreover, the simulation model needs to consider the work teams' efficiency that depends on the season and on the production level. These characteristics are managed by software to test alternative solutions for the scheduling of the multi-product productions, where the lot size and the due dates changes order by order. To verify the simulation model, it was tested to a real case of a motorcycle production plant, where different scheduling rules were considered and assessed measuring the performances and their effect on a specific objective function based on lateness.