Dynamic scheduling for job shop with machine failure based on data mining technologies

Purpose Influenced by the constantly changing manufacturing environment, no single dispatching rule (SDR) can consistently obtain better scheduling results than other rules for the dynamic job-shop scheduling problem (DJSP). Although the dynamic SDR selection classifier (DSSC) mined by traditional data-mining-based scheduling method has shown some improvement in comparison to an SDR, the enhancement is not significant since the rule selected by DSSC is still an SDR. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a novel data-mining-based scheduling method for the DJSP with machine failure aiming at minimizing the makespan. Firstly, a scheduling priority relation model (SPRM) is constructed to determine the appropriate priority relation between two operations based on the production system state and the difference between their priority values calculated using multiple SDRs. Subsequently, a training sample acquisition mechanism based on the optimal scheduling schemes is proposed to acquire training samples for the SPRM. Furthermore, feature selection and machine learning are conducted using the genetic algorithm and extreme learning machine to mine the SPRM. Findings Results from numerical experiments demonstrate that the SPRM, mined by the proposed method, not only achieves better scheduling results in most manufacturing environments but also maintains a higher level of stability in diverse manufacturing environments than an SDR and the DSSC. Originality/value This paper constructs a SPRM and mines it based on data mining technologies to obtain better results than an SDR and the DSSC in various manufacturing environments.