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Production Scheduling for Precast Plants using a Flow Shop Sequencing Model

Article  in  Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering · July 2002

DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0887-3801(2002)16:3(165)

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 Production Scheduling for Precast Plants using a Flow Shop
Sequencing Model
W. T. Chan1 and Hao Hu2

Abstract: There are two alternatives for production organization in precast factories—namely, the comprehensive method and the
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specialized method. Production scheduling under the specialized alternative has been found to be a difficult optimization problem if
heterogeneous elements are involved. A flow shop sequencing model that incorporates actual constraints encountered in practice is
proposed for this difficult case of precast production scheduling. The model is solved using a genetic algorithm 共GA兲. The traditional
minimize makespan and the more practical minimize tardiness penalty objective functions are optimized separately, as well as simulta-
neously using a normalized weighted GA. Comparisons between the GA and classical heuristic rules show that the GA can obtain good
schedules for the model, giving a family of solutions that are at least as good as those produced by the use of heuristic rules.
DOI: 10.1061/共ASCE兲0887-3801共2002兲16:3共165兲
CE Database keywords: Manufacturing facilities; Productivity; Scheduling; Algorithms; Management methods; Concrete, precast.

Introduction lem. Haidar et al. 共1999兲 developed a hybrid decision support

Precast technology and prefabrication have been pursued to in-
crease construction productivity, as well as the buildability and
quality of buildings. In the application of prefabrication in the
construction industry, it is necessary to look into material selec-
tion, element design, transportation, and site assembly methods,
as well as pay close attention to factory layout, inventory control,
and production scheduling. In this paper, however, we focus only
on production scheduling, noting that it impacts both site con-
struction and plant operations.
Scheduling involves the allocation of resources over a period
of time to perform a collection of jobs subject to known con-
straints. Scheduling is known to be nonpolynomial 共NP兲-
complete, and has proven to be a difficult task for human planners
and schedulers, particularly if optimal solutions are required. The
genetic algorithm 共GA兲 proposed by Holland 共1975兲 is a general
and robust search method that has been successfully applied in
many types of problems, including process scheduling and re-
source allocation 共Kopfer 1996; Gen and Cheng 1997兲 in many
disciplines. The following are recent examples of the application
of GAs in construction management. Chan et al. 共1996兲 proposed
a GA approach for construction scheduling and resource alloca-
tion. Chua et al. 共1997兲, Li and Love 共1997兲, and Feng et al.
共1997兲 presented various approaches to employing GAs for time-
cost trade-off optimization problems in construction projects. Li
and Love 共1998兲 employed a GA to solve a facility layout prob-
1 capacity-planning model for precast concrete building products in
Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, National Univ. of
Singapore, Singapore 119260. E-mail: cvecwt@nus.edu.sg
2
Graduate Assistant, Dept. of Civil Engineering, National Univ. of
Singapore, Singapore 119260. E-mail: huhaohome@yahoo.com
Note. Discussion open until December 1, 2002. Separate discussions
must be submitted for individual papers. To extend the closing date by
one month, a written request must be filed with the ASCE Managing
Editor. The manuscript for this paper was submitted for review and pos-
sible publication on October 20, 2000; approved on November 16, 2001.
This paper is part of the Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering,
Vol. 16, No. 3, July 1, 2002. ©ASCE, ISSN 0887-3801/2002/3-
165–174/$8.00⫹$.50 per page.
system employing genetic algorithms for the optimization of ex-
cavation and haulage operations, as well as the utilization of
equipment in opencast mining. Hegazy 共1999兲 used GAs to im-
prove the performance of commercial off-the-shelf project man-
agement software on resource allocation and leveling tasks. These
examples point to the growing popularity of the GA among re-
searchers in solving scheduling and resource allocation problems.
Planning and scheduling are also important in precast produc-
tion management, and much effort has been devoted to improving
the methods and techniques used in precast planning and sched-
uling. Ziverts and Bajars 共1976兲, in an early paper in this area,
highlighted problems faced by the precast concrete industry then
in relation to production planning and scheduling. They devel-
oped a computer program to estimate labor, scheduling order, and
flow control of raw materials for long production runs of pre-
stressed concrete products. Warszawski 共1982兲 identified the main
features of a proposed information system for planning, cost, and
quality control in precast production. Ishii and Muramatsu 共1982兲
recognized the different constraints placed by the demand for
standard and special components. They proposed models based
on periodic scheduling for standard components whose demand
could be forecasted, as well as other on-demand models for spe-
cial components. Warszawski 共1984兲 made a distinction between
short 共specific orders兲 and long 共continuous demand for standard
elements兲 production series on single or multiple molds, and pro-
posed scheduling models for both short and long production se-
ries. Dawood and Neale 共1993兲 developed a computer-based
order to help production managers make better planning decisions
and explore options. The model used backward planning and
parametric simulation techniques to automate the process of plan-
ning and compare the effects of different managerial decisions.
However, none of these take into account the many constraints
encountered in the industry. Most planning models use cost or
time minimization as the main objective. However, precasters are
more concerned with issues like when, which, and how many
elements should be produced to meet their delivery dates. These
issues are typically left to the supervisory personnel on the pro-

JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 2002 / 165

J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 2002, 16(3): 165-174

 duction floor. The result may be unnecessary idle waiting time,
factory production below the optimal plant capacity, overinven-
tory, and/or missed delivery dates.
Civil engineers and project managers are very familiar with
network-based scheduling techniques such as the critical path
method 共CPM兲 and the program evaluation and review technique.
On the other hand, production process scheduling models—for
example, single machine sequencing, multimachine sequencing,
flow shop, and job shop models—have been widely applied to
manufacturing systems and logistics, but are relatively unknown
in the construction industry. Yet, precast production is carried out
under factory-like conditions. Formal production scheduling mod-
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els of the kind used in manufacturing are not widely available in
the precast industry. Choo et al. 共1999兲 pointed out that the tradi-
tional scheduling tools based on the CPM are inadequate in terms
of use and expressiveness when it comes to supporting production
planning and control in the field. They adopted a job shop ap-
proach in the creation of a constraint-based database called Work-
Plan for work package scheduling, and compared this job shop
approach with the project centric approach in existing CPM soft-
ware. Chan and Hu 共1998兲 investigated the appropriateness of
three kinds of models—namely, a single machine sequencing
model, a parallel machine sequencing model, and a flow shop
scheduling model—to optimize the precast production process. In
a subsequent paper 共Chan and Hu 1999兲, they refined the ideas
proposed and developed a model based on flow shop sequencing.
However, only generic scheduling situations were considered and
only simple production constraints were included. As a result, the
model could not be readily used in actual production scheduling.
One of the shortcomings identified was the separate treatment of
the twin objectives of minimizing schedule length 共makespan兲
and the total tardiness penalty incurred for missed deliveries. In
this paper, we report on the work that has been done to further
refine and extend the flow shop sequencing model 共FSSM兲 to
remedy the deficiencies. The improved model is solved using a
GA-based approach to give a family of high-quality schedules
that can be used in production planning, and the GA approach is
compared against various heuristic procedures in common use.
Modeling Precast Production Scheduling
Precast Production
Two basic types of component production systems may be em-
ployed in a prefabrication plant—namely, the stationary system
and the traveling system 共Warszawski 1990兲. With the stationary
system, all production activities are performed in one place and
horizontal or battery molds are usually used. In the traveling sys-
tem shown in Fig. 1, molds are moved on a rolling line or a
conveyor from one workstation to another, with different activi-
ties being performed at each workstation. Almost always, a mov-
able mold line is connected to a curing chamber where the con-
crete mix undergoes an accelerated but controlled curing process.
The typical production process in a precast factory consists of
the following sequence: 共1兲 mixing of concrete and moving of
concrete from a mixing center to molds; 共2兲 setting of molds—
cleaning and oiling of mold surfaces, and fastening of side
frames; 共3兲 placing of reinforcements, fixtures, electrical conduits,
inserts, etc. to be contained in the components; 共4兲 casting—
pouring, compacting, and leveling of concrete; 共5兲 curing—
through an artificial 共usually heating兲 or natural air curing pro-
cess; 共6兲 demolding—stripping the side frame and taking out the
components; 共7兲 finishing, patching, and repairing components;
166 / JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 2002
J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 2002, 16(3): 165-174
Fig. 1. Production system: traveling molds 关adapted from Warszaw-
ski 共1990兲兴
and 共8兲 placing the completed components in the stockyard to
achieve the delivery strength. Precast items can then be trans-
ported to the construction site.
Two Methods of Crew Organization
Besides production line organization, the other dimension is that
of production crew organization, and according to Warszawski
共1990兲, there are two alternatives. Under the first alternative, the
same crew performs all operations outlined above. After casting
and completing the processing of one component, the crew moves
to the next mold and starts to work on the second component,
repeating the same sequence of actions. Under the second alter-
native, the total process is broken into several activities per-
formed by different crews with specialized tools and work meth-
ods.
Although the first alternative 共which may be called the com-
prehensive method兲 is easy to employ, it is usually less efficient
than the other alternative in terms of labor, tools, and workspace
utilization. It also creates problems in coordinating access to com-
mon resources by the different work teams. For example, under a
casting cycle of one day, all teams will want to use the crane for
demolding hardened elements in the morning when they start
their shifts. For the same reason, when all crews progress at ap-
proximately the same rate, the coordination of concrete supply
may pose another problem. The comprehensive method of work
crew organization has been found to be more suitable for the
stationary mold system. It is popular in small- to middle-sized
precasters because of the flexibility in deploying work crews.
The second method of production organization 共which may be
called the specialized method兲 requires division of the total work
into several tasks, such as demolding, mold preparation, casting,
and so on, with each task performed by a different crew. This
method is very efficient in terms of crew and equipment usage,
since there is little idle waiting time when all of the crews work at
a balanced rate. The system is particularly efficient with a mov-
able mold system—that is, molds moving between workstations
with tasks performed at each one of them—eliminating the need
for crews to walk between and set up at different stations. Al-
though this method is well suited to a movable production line, it
can also be employed in a production line using static molds,
where crews move from one mold to another. This system will
work smoothly if all components are identical, so that a balanced
rhythm of production can be maintained. However, when hetero-
geneous elements are involved with different production times,
there is a loss of efficiency due to the difficulty of balancing the
work at all of the workstations 共crews兲. Some components have to
wait for the next operation, and some workstations 共crews兲 have
to wait idly for the arrival of new components.
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Fig. 2. Specialized method of work crew organization: 共a兲 component view; 共b兲 workstation view
Under the specialized method of work crew organization,
scheduling is simple when identical components are involved;
however, it is rather difficult to determine an efficient schedule if
the components are heterogeneous, with a different production
time for each component type. Some components have to wait for
the next operation, and some workstations 共crews兲 have to wait
idly for the arrival of new components, a situation depicted in
Figs. 2共a and b兲. The darkest blocks in Fig. 2共a兲 represent the
component waiting time, while those in Fig. 2共b兲 represent the
workstation idle time. Figs. 2共a and b兲 are Gantt charts for the
same production schedule, but Fig. 2共a兲 is plotted from the view-
point of components 共jobs兲, while Fig. 2共b兲 is plotted from the
viewpoint of workstations 共machines兲.
Heterogeneous element production is the prevailing situation
in the industry, where it is very common to produce many differ-
ent types of elements to satisfy several contract orders at the same
time. We focus on this problem, and propose a scheduling model
and the corresponding algorithms for this difficult but very prac-
tical situation encountered in the industry.
Flow Shop Sequencing Model for Specialized Precast
Production
Based on our investigation and observation of precast plants, pre-
cast production under the specialized method possesses many of
the characteristics of the traditional flow shop scheduling problem
共FSP兲. The FSP is generally described as follows. There are m
machines and n jobs; each job consists of m operations, and each
operation requires a different machine. The n jobs have to be
processed in the same sequence on all of the machines. The ob-
jective is to find the sequence of jobs minimizing the maximum
flow time, which is technically called the makespan of the pro-
duction schedule.
Dudek et al. 共1992兲 pointed out that there were few descrip-
tions of the applications of algorithms minimizing the schedule
makespan for the FSP in the literature, and that the modeling
assumptions made in the standard flow shop scheduling model are
overly restrictive and idealistic. Practical constraints on due dates,
resources, and working hours are not considered in the model.
JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 2002 / 167
J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 2002, 16(3): 165-174
Furthermore, rather than the criterion of makespan minimization
used in the model, industry is more concerned with meeting due
dates. The industry’s lack of interest because of these shortcom-
ings may have caused researchers to direct their efforts elsewhere.
Chan and Hu 共1999兲 described a flow shop sequencing model that
was largely based on the FSP, and attempted to address some of
these issues in precast scheduling work. The FSSM can be sum-
marized as follows. There are n jobs 共precast components兲 to be
processed in the same task sequence by m(⫽6) machines 共work-
stations or crews—that is, mold setting, reinforcement setting,
casting, curing, demolding, and finishing/repairing兲. A distinction
is made between normal working time, off-normal working time,
and overtime. All operations can be preempted, with the excep-
tion of casting and curing. Every job is processed on one machine
at a time, and every machine processes one job at a time, except
for curing, which is a parallel process and can handle more than
one job simultaneously. Resequencing of jobs is possible after the
curing operation if it is advantageous to do so. The objective is to
find a schedule 共i.e., the job processing sequence兲 that gives the
minimum makespan, meets delivery dates, or satisfies other quan-
tifiable criteria. Precedence constraints between jobs have re-
cently been added to the FSSM, and makespan and the total tar-
diness penalities are minimized simultaneously using a
normalized weighted GA 共NWGA兲. These are explained in more
detail later.
The FSSM is based on the FSP, but special considerations
have been added to reflect practical situations in precast plants.
• A distinction is made between normal working time, off-
normal working time, and overtime in the FSSM. In contrast,
time in the traditional FSP is continuous, with no distinction
between working and nonworking hours.
• All operations in the standard FSP are nonpreemptive. In the
FSSM, casting and curing are nonpreemptive, which means
that a task, once started, cannot be interrupted until it is com-
pleted; other operations are preemptive and they can be inter-
rupted and resumed later on the same machine.
• All operations in the FSP proceed sequentially and every ma-
chine processes only one job at a time. Processing of a job on
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Fig. 3. Calculation of completion time of preemptive and nonpreemptive operations
the current machine only begins if the machine is free and if
processing of the job by the previous machine has been com-
pleted. However, curing in the FSSM is modeled as a parallel
process and different components can be cured simultaneously.
Therefore, a component can be cured immediately after cast-
ing 共assuming that there is enough curing space in the cham-
ber兲.
• In the FSP, the processing order of the jobs remains unchanged
from the start to the end. However, in the FSSM, rescheduling
is possible after the curing operation if it is advantageous to
switch the processing order of components for the remaining
operations.
• Precedence constraints may exist among precast components
in the FSSM.
The processing time of job i on machine k is given by t ik (i
⫽1,...,n;k⫽1,...,m). Let C( j i ,k) denote the completion time of
job j i on machine k, let 兵 j 1 , j 2 ,..., j n 其 denote a job permutation,
and let T D and T N denote the daily normal working time and
off-normal working time, respectively; T N ⫽24⫺T D . Let OT rep-
resent overtime and let d represent number of days. If the pro-
cessing of operations ends within the normal working time for the
current day 关cases 共1兲 and 共3兲, respectively, in Fig. 3兴, the comple-
tion time of preemptive and nonpreemptive operations can be
computed as per the standard FSP. However, if overtime is not
used, preemptive operations are stopped at the end of the normal
working time for the current day and are completed during nor-
mal working time the next day 关case 共2兲 in Fig. 3兴. For nonpre-
emptive operations, if they cannot be completed within the nor-
mal working time during the current day, they can be completed
using overtime 关case 共4兲 in Fig. 3兴 or they can be rescheduled for
the next work day 关case 共5兲 in Fig. 3兴. Eqs. 共1兲 and 共2兲 define the
completion times for the preemptive and nonpreemptive cases,
respectively
再
t if t⭐24•d⫹T D
C 共 j i ,k 兲 ⫽
t⫹T N if t⬎24•d⫹T D
168 / JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 2002
J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 2002, 16(3): 165-174
where t⫽max兵C(ji⫺1 ,k),C(ji ,k⫺1)其⫹t jik ; d⫽int(t/24); i
⫽2,3,...,n; and k⫽2,...,m; and
再
t if t⭐24•d⫹T D
C 共 j i ,k 兲 ⫽ or if t⬎24•d⫹T D and OT⬎0
24共 d⫹1 兲 ⫹t j 1 k if t⬎24•d⫹T D and OT⫽0
(2)
where t⫽max兵(C(ji⫺1) ,k), C( j i ,k⫺1) 其 ⫹t j i k ; d⫽int(t/24); i
⫽2,3,...,n; and k⫽2,¯ ,m.
The makespan, which is the completion time of the last job on
the last machine, is calculated as
makespan⫽C max⫽C 共 j n ,m 兲 (3)
In the traditional flow shop scheduling model, a new operation
( j i ,k) of job j i on machine k cannot be started until j i flows from
machine k⫺1 and job j i⫺1 has been finished on machine k. How-
ever, different components can be cured simultaneously. The start
of a component’s curing is only dependent on the finish of its
casting 共i.e., the processing of job j i on machine k⫺1兲. A com-
ponent can be cured as soon as it is cast, and it need not wait for
the completion of curing of another component 共curing space in
the chamber permitting兲. However, if the finish time of the curing
activity falls during the off-normal period, i.e., between (24d
⫹T D ) and 24(d⫹1), the next operation, demolding, cannot be
processed until the next work day, i.e., the 24(d⫹1)th hour.
Let d i denote the due date, and c i the completion time for job
j i . Associated with each job is a unit earliness penalty ␣ i ⬎0 and
a unit tardiness penalty ␤ i ⬎0. Tardiness T i is defined as T i
⫽max兵0,c i ⫺d i 其 , while earliness E i is defined as E i ⫽max兵0,d i
⫺c i 其 . A job i can be given a time window a i within which no
(1) penalties are incurred if its completion time is within the interval
(d i ⫺a i ,d i ⫹a i ). Let ⌸ be the set of all possible job sequences,
 and let ␴ be an arbitrary sequence. Assuming that the penalty
functions are linear, a generic expression for the earliness/
tardiness (E/T) penalty can be formulated as Eq. 共4兲
n

min f 共 ␴ 兲 ⫽
␴苸⌸
兺 关 ␣ i共 E i ⫺a i 兲 U 共 E i ⫺a i 兲 ⫹␤ i共 T i ⫺a i 兲 U 共 T i ⫺a i 兲兴
i⫽1
(4)
where U(x⫺c)⫽unit step function defined as

U 共 x⫺a i 兲 ⫽ 再 0
1
if x⭐a i
if x⬎a i Fig. 4. Genetic algorithm model for scheduling of precast production

The E/T penalties are reduced to a tardiness penalty if only tar-

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diness is considered.
Heuristic Rules and Genetic Algorithms for Flow Shop
Scheduling Problems
The flow shop scheduling problem has proven to be NP-complete
in general, and most researchers have focused on approximate
algorithms employing heuristics to provide good and quick solu-
tions. Gen and Cheng 共1997兲 and Chen et al. 共1995兲 surveyed the
existing heuristics for the m-machine n-job flow shop problem
with makespan as the criterion. Palmer’s, Gupta’s, Campbell,
Dudek and Smith 共CDS兲, and rapid access 共RA兲 heuristics are
implemented and compared against GAs in this paper. However,
these heuristics are developed for minimizing the schedule
makespan, and few algorithms have been published for optimiz-
ing the E/T criterion. In industry, the commonly used heuristic
for the tardiness problem is the earliest due date 共EDD兲 rule,
which sequences the jobs in ascending order of their due dates.
Genetic algorithms have been successfully applied to solve the
traditional FSP. Reeves 共1995兲 proposed one such implementa-
tion, and concluded that simulated annealing algorithms and GAs
produce comparable results for most sizes and types of problems,
but GAs will perform relatively better for large problems and will
reach a near-optimal solution more quickly. Chen et al. 共1995兲
proposed a GA based heuristic for the FSSP with makespan as the
criterion. Murata et al. 共1996兲 applied a multiobjective GA to the
FSSP.
Genetic Algorithm Approach
Genetic algorithms are stochastic search techniques based on the
mechanism of natural selection and natural genetics. GAs, differ-
ing from conventional search techniques, start with an initial set
of random solutions called a population. In GAs, each individual
solution is represented by a single stringlike entity called a chro-
mosome. When applied to scheduling, each individual in the
population corresponds to one possible solution of the scheduling
problem. A chromosome is the internal representation of the so-
lution, and consists of a linear string of genes that can be trans-
formed directly or decoded indirectly to produce an actual sched-
ule. The chromosomes evolve through successive iterations,
called generations. During each generation, the chromosomes are
evaluated, using some measure of fitness. To create the next gen-
eration, either merging of chromosomes from members of the
current generation using a crossover operator or modifying a
chromosome using a mutation operator forms new chromosomes,
called offspring. A new generation is formed by 共1兲 selecting,
according to the fitness values, some of the parents and offspring;
and 共2兲 rejecting others so as to keep the population size constant.
Fitter chromosomes have higher probabilities of being selected.
After several generations, the algorithm converges to the best
chromosome, which hopefully represents the optimum or near-
optimal solution to the problem.
Genetic Algorithm Model for Precast Production
Scheduling
Chan et al. 共1996兲 proposed a generic GA model suitable for
scheduling and resource allocation problems. We use the same
basic GA model for the scheduling of precast production 共Fig. 4兲.
In the following sections, we describe some of the details and
specific adaptations of the GA for the FSSM model.
Implementation of Genetic Algorithm for Precast
Production
Representation
Two different kinds of representations can be adopted for the
production scheduling problem. One is based on permutation or-
dering, and the other is based on random keys. In permutation
ordering, the production order is represented directly by the order
of appearance of the job identification numbers in the chromo-
some string. It is evident that under crossover and mutation, off-
spring may contain more than one occurrence of a job number or
leave out a job number entirely. Such a chromosome is an illegal
schedule. We have used a random key representation instead in
the adapted FSSM because of the ease with which it eliminates
the problem of illegal offspring and itss ability to handle prece-
dence constraints. The random key representation was proposed
by Bean 共1994兲, and encodes a solution with random numbers
from 0.0 to 1.0. These random values are applied as sort keys to
represent the ordering priority used to build a schedule. For ex-
ample, the jobs can be arranged in ascending order of the evolved
random key values, with jobs having smaller values being con-
sidered for scheduling first. When used for scheduling problems,
there are as many genes 共random keys兲 in the chromosome as
there are jobs to be scheduled 共Chan and Hu 1999兲. Random keys
neatly solve the problem of illegal offspring that may be gener-
ated during genetic operations on chromosomes at the expense of
an enlarged search space. However, an extra gene 共also a random
number between 0.0 and 1.0兲 is added at the end of the random
key sequence to weight the makespan criterion when both the
makespan and the E/T are considered simultaneously. Therefore,
a chromosome based on random keys may look like Fig. 5, with
(n⫹1) genes, where n is the number of jobs. We will show the
performance of the algorithm with different weight settings.
In practical precast scheduling, it is sometimes required to
assign precedence constraints among the jobs in the production
sequence. This can be easily done in the random key representa-

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J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 2002, 16(3): 165-174


Fig. 5. Chromosomal representation
tion. If element i must be prefabricated before element j, we
check and enforce the requirement that gene关 i 兴 ⬍gene关 j 兴 .
Crossover
Crossover is the principal mechanism by which the GA arranges
for a good schema present on different chromosomes to aggregate
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on a single individual. The traditional crossover can be used with-
out modification on the random key representation. We used a
single-point crossover that involves the exchange of a part of each
chromosome in a pair across a randomly chosen point 关Fig. 6共a兲兴.
Although crossover is principally thought of as a mechanism that
improves the quality of solutions, it is also possible that crossover
will disrupt a good schema already present, especially those of
higher order if it is overused.
Mutation
Mutation operates on a single chromosome and produces a new
genotype by making a random change to values of one or more of
the genes in a chromosome string. Mutation is performed at the
gene level, but not every gene needs to be 共or should be兲 mutated.
The frequency of mutation is often kept very low to avoid disrup-
tion of good solutions; the principal use of mutation is to reintro-
duce genetic diversity to avoid getting trapped in local optima. A
constant mutation scheme 关Fig. 6共b兲兴 is used in our implementa-
tion of the GA for the FSSM. In constant mutation, a suitable
constant value is added 共subtracted兲 to 共from兲 the existing allele
value.
However, after crossover and mutation, we need to check that
all precedence constraints have been satisfied using the inequality
constraint described previously. The gene values may have to be
adjusted to satisfy the precedence requirement.
Decoding
Decoding the random key representation to build a schedule is
simple. The first n gene values are used as priorities 共usually
interpreted in ascending order兲 and are used to sort the activities
Fig. 6. Diagram of: 共a兲 one-point crossover; 共b兲 constant mutation
170 / JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 2002
J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 2002, 16(3): 165-174
so as to get a legal schedule. The (n⫹1)th gene value represents
the weight of the makespan criterion, while the weight of the E/T
criterion is set equal to 共1-weight of makespan criterion兲. This
allows our gene representation to dynamically change the weights
in the two-criteria objective to maintain various search directions
共Murata et al. 1996兲, instead of using fixed weights. For example,
if we have a 12-element chromosome that represents a schedule
of 11 jobs (n⫽11) with the gene values of 关0.11, 0.03, 0.70, 0.66,
0.45, 0.38, 0.97, 0.72, 0.22, 0.84, 0.59, 0.25兴, when sorted, the
first 11 values become 0.03→0.11→0.22→0.38→0.45→0.59
→0.66→0.70→0.72→0.84→0.97.
Comparing the new list with the initial permutation, we get the
order in which to consider the jobs when building the schedule,
2→1→9→6→5→11→4→3→8→10→7. The weight of the
makespan criterion is 0.25, while that of the E/T criterion is 1.0
⫺0.25⫽0.75. The schedule can then be evaluated to determine its
fitness.
GA Parameters
There are several parameters that can determine the performance
of the GA, but their optimal values cannot be ascertained by
applying fixed rules. Main GA parameters include the population
size, the number of iterations performed, and the probability of
crossover and mutation. In this paper, the values of these param-
eters were determined from a study of the literature, as well as
through limited experimentation to find a suitable population size
共Chan and Hu 1999兲. The values used for the GA parameters were
as follows: population size, 100; number of iterations, 400; cross-
over probability, 0.85; and mutation probability, 0.05.
ObjectiveÕEvaluation Functions
Makespan is calculated using Eqs. 共1兲–共3兲, while the penalty for
earliness/tardiness is calculated using Eq. 共4兲. For the makespan-
tardiness optimization, Murata et al. 共1996兲 suggested a weighted
sum approach to combine the two objective functions into a scalar
fitness function f (x), as follows:
maxf 共 x 兲 ⫽⫺W makespan•makespan共 x 兲 ⫺W tardiness•tardiness共 x 兲
(5)
where makespan(x)⫽makespan when the n jobs are processed in
the order of x; tardiness(x)⫽total tardiness; W makespan⫽random
real number over the closed interval 关0, 1兴; and W tardiness⫽1
⫺W makespan .
However, the makespan and the tardiness penalty may not be
of the same magnitude in some problems. As a result, it is pos-
sible that the contribution of the makespan evaluation will be
dominated by a large evaluation from the tardiness penalty or vice
versa. This defect was also commented on by Ishibuchi and Mu-
rata 共1998兲. In a test problem with twin criteria of minimizing
both the makespan and the maximal tardiness, they indicated that
the variance of the makespan is much smaller than that of the
maximal tardiness. So they normalized the two scheduling criteria
using constant multipliers in order to handle the two criteria
equally
f 1 共 x 兲 ⫽5⫻ 共 makespan兲 ; f 2 共 x 兲 ⫽2⫻ 共 maximal tardiness兲 (6)
However, the constants are likely to be problem dependent,
and it is not easy to determine their proper values in Eq. 共6兲. We
propose the use of two linear normalization equations instead to
remedy this
 Table 1. Production Times and Unit E/T Penalties for Six-Component Example
Components Production times 共h兲 E/T penalties
Due
Molds Rebars Casting Demolding Finishing dates ␣ i 共earliness兲 ␤ i 共tardiness兲
Number Name 共two men兲 共three men兲 共four men兲 共two men兲 共two men兲 共h兲 共units/h兲 共units/h兲
1 Balcony 共6 m 2 兲 1.0 0.8 1.2 1.5 0.5 28 2 10
2 Utility room 共12 m 2 兲 1.7 2.0 2.0 1.5 2.5 28 2 10
3 Footing 共2.5 t兲 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.0 28 1 10
4 Stump 共1.5 t兲 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.4 1.0 28 1 10
5 Lobby 共12.0 t兲 1.5 1.8 1.2 1.5 1.5 52 2 10
6 Shaft 共13.1 t兲 1.5 1.6 1.5 1.8 0.8 32 2 10
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再 0
f m ⫽ 共 m w ⫺m 兲 / 共 m w ⫺m b 兲
1
if m w ⬍m
if m b ⬍m⭐m w
if m⭐m b
(7)
for mold preparation, reinforcement, casting, demolding, and
finishing/repairing 共curing is an operation that does not require
any crew兲. With stationary molds, the specialized crews move

再
0 if t w ⬍t
f t⫽ 共 m w ⫺m 兲 / 共 m w ⫺m b 兲 if t b ⬍t⭐t w
1 if t⭐t b
where m and t denote makespan and total tardiness penalties,
respectively; m b and t b ⫽minimum makespan and minimum total
tardiness penalties obtained by using a single objective GA
search; and m w and t w ⫽maximum makespan and tardiness pen-
alties from the single objective GA. Therefore, the objective func-
tion of our NWGA can be represented as
min f ⫽w m • f m ⫹w t • f t
where w m and w t ⫽weights for f m and f t , respectively; w m is
obtained directly by evolution of the chromosome string as de-
scribed earlier; and w t is calculated from the relation w m ⫹w t
⫽1.
Results and Discussion
Numerical Examples
Our examples employ stationary molds and the specialized pro-
duction method of crew organization. There are only five crews—
from one mold to another. The production times used in the ex-
amples are the average values observed in practice. Natural cur-
ing was used, and its duration is 12 h. In our examples, the maxi-
(8) mum overtime for casting per work day is 4 h. Overtime is used
to complete an element if it is due the next day and doing so can
accomplish all of the processes within the overtime period al-
lowed; otherwise, the process is completed in normal working
time over consecutive days.
Our first example considers a simple precast situation compris-
ing six heterogeneous components. Production times, due dates,
and E/T penalties of these components are listed in Table 1. The
second example expands the problem considerably by taking a
(9) 10-element type and 44-component situation with one specialized
crew for each of the five tasks. Table 2 compares the schedules
obtained by our GA scheduling model against those obtained by
different heuristic procedures.
In our examples, we assumed that there were no predecessor
and successor schedules. Fig. 7 illustrates a schedule produced by
GA for example 1. It is evident from Fig. 7 that there is some idle
time when all of the task crews 共except the first兲 have to wait for
the arrival of the first component. Workstations are also idle when
there are no more scheduled components and new jobs do not
come in. This idle lead time at the beginning of a schedule may
not be present in actual practice, since components are scheduled
in batches over finite-planning periods, with the scheduling of

Table 2. Results for 44-Component Example

Make Tardiness E/T Over CPU
Algorithm span penalty penalty time time
used 共h兲 共units兲 共units兲 共h兲 共s兲
Palmer’s heuristic 175.1 3,776.0 5.177.0 7.1 ⬇0.000
Gupta’s heuristic 174.4 4,781.5 6.154.9 7.2 ⬇0.000
CDS heuristic 174.4 5.980.0 7,472.5 7.2 ⬇0.000
RA heuristic 192.3 7,368.5 8,319.4 10.0 ⬇0.000
EDD rule 193.5 155.0 654.2 9.1 ⬇0.000
GAsa 170.8 4,940.5 6,242.4 10.9 3.933
GAsa 170.8 3,980.0 5,322.6 9.2 4.000
GAsb 174.7 0.0 856.7 8.5 3.967
GAsb 192.5 0.0 372.4 7.3 3.883
GAsc 171.6 0.0 1,046.35 8.7 4.183
GAsc 171.5 0.0 919.4 9.2 4.167
a
These use single objective optimization 共makespan or tardiness penalty兲.
b
These use single objective optimization 共makespan or tardiness penalty兲.
c
These use a weighted objective function 关Eq. 共9兲兴.

JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 2002 / 171

J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 2002, 16(3): 165-174

 Fig. 7. Gantt chart of schedule for six-component example
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each batch being independent of each other. Each resulting sched-
ule is tacked on to the end of the previous schedule to form a
rolling schedule. The gray blocks in Fig. 7 show idle time in the
production schedule, which leads to lower plant productivity—
compared to what it should be when production is on an ongoing-
rolling schedule.
Comparison of Different Algorithms
We implemented some of the heuristics described in Gen and
Cheng 共1997兲 and Chen et al. 共1995兲, and tried them on several
example problems, including the two discussed in this paper. The
preliminary results show that Palmer’s, Gupta’s, CDS, and RA
heuristics were good at shortening the makespan, while the EDD
rule was good at reducing the tardiness penalty and/or E/T pen-
alty. Nevertheless, we cannot conclude which heuristic is the best
because it is well known that heuristics do not work well outside
of the problems for which they are designed, and their perfor-
mance is sensitive to the input data.
For example 2, Table 2 compares the schedules obtained by
our GA scheduling model with those obtained by different heu-
ristic algorithms. The schedules with the minimum makespan of
170.8 h and the minimum tardiness penalty of 0.0 units were both
obtained using GAs. Similarly, for example 1, the schedules with
the minimum makespan of 48.5 h and the minimum tardiness
penalty of 0.0 units were both acquired by GAs. Unlike heuristic
rules, GAs were able to come up with more than one optimal
solution. This illustrates another important advantage of the GAs,

Table 3. Comparison of Schedule Attributes under Different T D Settings

Algorithms
Criteria Case Palmer Gupta CDS RA EDD GA
Makespan T D ⫽8 175.1 174.4 174.4 192.3 193.5 171.5
OT c ⫽4 175.1 174.4 174.4 192.3 193.5 171.5
T D ⫽10 175.1 172.0 172.0 175.6 174.2 170.8
OT⫽0 175.1 172.0 172.0 175.6 174.2 170.8
T D ⫽24 76.1 73.9 73.9 75.0 78.5 72.4
OT⫽0 76.1 73.9 73.9 75.0 78.5 72.4

Tardiness penalty T D ⫽8 3,776.6 4,781.5 5,980.0 7,368.5 155.0 0.0

OT c ⫽4 3,776.6 4,781.5 5,980.0 7,368.5 155.0 0.0
T D ⫽10 3,400.5 4,370.5 5,623.0 6,715.5 10.0 0.0
OT⫽0 3,400.5 4,370.5 5,623.0 6,715.5 10.0 0.0
T D ⫽24 28.0 343.0 585.0 776.0 0.0 0.0
OT⫽0 28.0 343.0 585.0 776.0 0.0 0.0

E/T penalty T D ⫽8 5,177.0 6,154.9 7,472.5 8,319.4 654.2 919.4

OT c ⫽4 5,177.0 6,154.9 7,472.5 8,319.4 654.2 919.4
T D ⫽10 4,952.9 6,897.9 7,274.9 7,658.8 557.4 1,278.2
OT⫽0 4,952.9 6,897.9 7,274.9 7,658.8 557.4 1,278.2
T D ⫽24 2,811.1 3,103.3 3,377.5 3,288.4 2,539.9 2,721.2
OT⫽0 2,811.1 3,103.3 3,377.5 3,288.4 2,539.9 2,721.2

Overtime work T D ⫽8 7.1 7.2 7.2 10.0 9.1 9.2

OT c ⫽4 7.1 7.2 7.2 10.0 9.1 9.2
T D ⫽10 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
OT⫽0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
T D ⫽24 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
OT⫽0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Note: T D means daily normal working time; OT c means overtime work for casting only; OT means overtime work for all workstations in the factories.

172 / JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 2002

J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 2002, 16(3): 165-174


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Fig. 8. Solutions obtained by NWGA for 44-component example
which can produce a family of high quality 共near optimal兲 solu-
tions in a short time.
From Table 2, it can be seen that the schedule with the mini-
mum makespan of 170.8 h has a rather high tardiness penalty of
4,940.5 units. Likewise, a schedule with the minimum tardiness
penalty of 0.0 units has a makespan of 192.5 h. Both of these
schedules were produced by GAs using a single objective func-
tion. This suggests that a good schedule developed under one
criterion may have a poor evaluation under another criterion; e.g.,
a good schedule with a shorter makespan might incur a large
tardiness penalty and vice versa. However, the normalized
weighted GA produced schedules with short makespans without
incurring any tardiness penalty 共171.5 h/0.0 units and 171.6 h/0.0
units兲. This is noteworthy, since scheduling in real life requires
schedules that achieve a balance between two sometimes compet-
ing objectives, and finding good schedules that do well on mul-
tiple criteria is a difficult problem.
We ran another experiment where we changed the proportion
between normal and overtime hours. We found that, contrary to
expectation, schedules that employed more overtime work did not
always have a smaller makespan and/or tardiness penalty. In the
examples described above, overtime work is only considered for
the casting activity to guarantee that the casting of an element
completes once it is started, a practice commonly adopted in the
precast industry. The use of overtime can be expected to shorten
the overall makespan, albeit at a higher cost. As an experiment,
we considered a change of the daily normal working time from 8
to 10 h 共with the maximum permitted overtime work reduced
from 4 to 0 h兲. We also considered the case of 24-h continuous
production operation. The results are shown in Table 3, which
indicates that the use of overtime does not lead to shorter sched-
ules. One possible reason for this is that a gain for the makespan
Table 4. Results Obtained with Different Evaluation Functions
Evaluation Makespan
function 共h兲
Single f m 170.78
Single f t 176.71
f m⫹ f t 171.85
f m• f t 171.64
w m • f m ⫹w t • f t a 171.17
w m • f m ⫹w t • f t b 171.32
a
w m is a randomly generated real number with the range 关0,1兴.
b
w m is a gene value in the range 关0,1兴.
J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 2002, 16(3): 165-174
objective by working overtime in the casting activity may be
offset by delays in other activities.
Makespan-Tardiness Optimization
Murata et al. 共1996兲 demonstrated that a weighted multiobjective
GA could find better Pareto optimal solutions than the vector
evaluated GA described by Schaffer 共1985兲 when they applied it
to the FSSP with two objectives—to minimize the makespan and
to minimize the total tardiness. However, we could not locate the
complete Pareto front for our example when we applied a similar
approach to the 10-element type 44-component example. In fact,
we could only get a few nondominated solutions in every GA run.
We tried an alternative method using an NWGA based on the
objective functions described in Eqs. 共7兲–共9兲. Fig. 8 shows 30
solutions obtained by the NWGA. Points A and B represent two
extremes for the best solutions obtained for the makespan and
tardiness criteria. It can be seen from Fig. 8 that the makespan
difference is small between the possible nondominated solutions.
In an extreme situation, the makespan of solution B is only 1.5 h
共171.5–170.0兲 shorter than that of solution A. This small im-
provement is not very significant in real-world prefabrication. In
fact, many precasters may prefer a solution with a short makespan
and a small or no tardiness penalty if they have to make a trade-
off. Therefore, we have to generate as many compromise solu-
tions as possible near the Pareto front. The proposed NWGA is
quite effective at generating such solutions.
Two methods were used to generate weights used in Eq. 共9兲—
one is to produce weights randomly; the other is to obtain weights
from a gene value 共Fig. 5兲. Besides a weighted sum objective
function, two other definitions of the objective function were
tested—the sum and the product of f m and f t . The average best
results of 20 consecutive GA runs are summarized in Table 4. The
product of f m and f t was used to evaluate the solution quality. The
closer the product is to 1, the better the solution is.
From Table 4, we can see that the combined objective func-
tions with f m and f t allow us to obtain better compromise solu-
tions than those obtained from a single objective function. The
results from the weighted objective function are only slightly
worse than those from the product objective function. Among the
two weighted GAs, the approach where the weight is provided by
a gene value seems better than the other one where the weight is
a randomly generated number.
Conclusions
A modified FSSM for specialized precast production was pro-
posed and solutions in the form of schedules were obtained using
Tardiness
共units兲 fm ft f m• f t
7310.60 0.9847 0.6946 0.6839
0.00 0.8683 1.0000 0.8683
60.78 0.9637 0.9957 0.9595
2.85 0.9679 0.9998 0.9677
425.10 0.9770 0.9699 0.9474
153.73 0.9742 0.9891 0.9635
JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 2002 / 173
 heuristic rules as well as a GA approach. Our preliminary experi-
ments show that the GA is a useful and effective method for
solving the FSSM. In the problems on which the GA was tried,
the advantages of the GA over heuristics are that the GA produced
equal or better results efficiently, and was able to give a family of
optimal and/or near optimal results in a short time. The GA also
produced good results under various combinations of normal and
overtime working hours. A normalized weighted approach was
proposed to find nondominated solutions for the makespan-
tardiness optimization. The results show that the NWGA can re-
turn many high quality compromise solutions for decision makers
to choose from. However, additional experiments on other prob-
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lems with different input data sizes should be conducted in order
to arrive at a more definite conclusion on the efficacy of the GA in
solving the FSSM for precast production scheduling.
Acknowledgments
The writers are grateful to the staff and officers of the Precast
Technology Center of the Housing & Development Board, Sin-
gapore, for their support of the research that resulted in the find-
ings reported in this paper.
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