Abstract

A scheduling problem arising in factories producing large building blocks is modelled applying optimization techniques. The application is a shipyard workshop producing prefabricated keel elements. The objective is to maximize the number of building blocks produced in the factory during a certain time window. The solution combines a Guided Local Search heuristic with Fast Local Search techniques. A final discussion explains the additional real-life issues arising in the industrial application and how firm-specific constraints can be conveniently considered by the model.