A computerized tool planning and scheduling system

There have been significant advances in scheduling techniques in production scheduling theory, but few might have attempted to use them in practice. This paper deals with computerizing the planning and scheduling of tool orders in an in-house tool room of FASTSUN, an engineering firm. The system successfully adopted the well-known critical ratio (CR) method for scheduling on each of the work centres. The software developed is a user-friendly and menu-driven package and caters for the tool planning and scheduling of more than 7000 tools used by the firm. The concepts and the techniques used can be easily adapted to the in-house tool room of any manufacturing industr