15.6 Chapter Summary & Review

This chapter examines short-term scheduling in operations management, which involves determining the sequence and timing of jobs to optimize the use of limited resources such as machines, labour, and time. Scheduling is critical in both manufacturing and service industries because it affects efficiency, job flow time, lateness, makespan, and customer satisfaction. In manufacturing, scheduling challenges arise from job variety, machine availability, and operation sequences, which necessitate prioritization rules such as Earliest Due Date (EDD) or Shortest Processing Time (SPT). More complex cases—such as jobs processed across two or more machines—can be solved using techniques like Johnson’s Rule, while resource assignment problems (e.g., allocating cranes to sites) can be addressed using the Hungarian Method.

In service settings, scheduling is further complicated by job arrival times, due dates, and varying processing times. Common rules include First-Come, First-Served (FCFS) for fairness, SPT to reduce flow time, EDD to minimize lateness, Critical Ratio (CR) to balance urgency, and Longest Processing Time (LPT) when longer jobs risk delays. The chapter highlights how the choice of rule impacts overall efficiency and performance trade-offs, showing that no single approach is universally best. Ultimately, effective scheduling requires selecting strategies that align with organizational objectives, whether minimizing costs, meeting deadlines, or improving customer service, making it a vital tool for achieving operational excellence.

OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT. [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

Prompt: Please take the chapter content in this document attached and summarize the key concepts into no more than two paragraphs. Reviewed by authors.