This work proposes a Decision Support System (DSS) for production scheduling in steel casting foundries. To this end, the productive environment of these foundries is organized by means of a production control system known as Period Batch Control (PBC). Three viable decision models for production scheduling are proposed: a binary integer programming model, a model based on classical approximation methods, specifically the method known as beam search, and a model based on a meta-heuristic known as genetic algorithm. Also presented here are the experimental results obtained from the application of the three models and an analysis of the fitness of the proposal for eight representative steel casting foundries in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.
decision support systems; production scheduling; steel casting foundries
