An Overview of Theories and Methods of Production Scheduling

Research on theories and methods of production scheduling is an intractable subject, but it is very crucial for improving productivities and benefits in one enterprise or industry, specially in the era of market economy nowadays. It has been more than 50 years since the beginning of the research on theories and methods of production scheduling, but till now there still exists the gap between classical scheduling theories and practical scheduling problems. Considering this chracteristics, some existing problems and factors to be addressed in handling practical scheduling problems are specified, various methods for solving production scheduling problems and some typical applications of these methods are listed, and their advantages, disadvantages are also indicated. Finally, several future research trends of production scheduling theories and methods and proposals for the future research work are summarized and presented respectively.