Energy Cost-Oriented Scheduling With Job Prioritization

Abstract

Energy as a major cost factor has become increasingly important for manufacturing companies. Due to current developments, such as smart metering, internet of things, and varying pricing schemes, companies can increase energy efficiency and reduce energy costs. In order to realize benefits, we introduce a mixed-integer linear scheduling model providing the feature of maximizing the gross profit of prioritized jobs. The underlying production environment consists of three stages, where jobs have to be passed in the same order. A computational analysis shows that energy costs can be significantly decreased and the prioritization of jobs opens excellent degrees of freedom for a decision maker.