Simulation of sequencing rules using witness in a milling job shop

Abstract

Simulation is essential when studying manufacturing processes or designing production systems. This project was a real case study which involved a job shop with five similar CNC milling machines. A total of six jobs were performed and each of them consisted of a different set of operations. The sequence of the six jobs to enter the system was determined by the sequencing rules including shortest setup time (SST), shortest processing time (SPT), shortest processing and setup time (SPST), earliest due date (EDD), least process (LP), and lowest volume (LV). The setup time was taken into consideration to make the results more realistic. Due to the complexity of the model, WITNESS was used to simulate all the sequencing rules. The best approach was then determined by comparing the results of each rule. By doing this, the case company would be able to make a better decision on which job should be processed first instead of selecting it randomly among the jobs.