Assessing Scheduling Strategies for a Shared Resource for Multiple Synchronous Lines

This study uses discrete-event simulation to explore scheduling policies for a shared resource across three synchronous manufacturing lines. The objective is to enhance operational efficiency and reduce blocking and starving downtime. Scheduling for synchronous environments is a less explored area compared to asynchronous systems. Simulation experiments compare the performance of five easy-to-implement scheduling strategies: First-In-First-Out (FIFO), Upstream Priority, Downstream Priority, Random Selection, and Round Robin. The Round-Robin method is commonly used in CPU and computer network scheduling. Scenarios include random station breakdowns. Statistical analysis identifies FIFO and Round Robin strategies as notably effective. Such an offline study could be used to set policies for a digital twin model to determine real-time decisions based on system state, potentially updating the policies using reinforcement learning based on resulting actual performance.