Simultaneous regular and non-regular production scheduling of multipurpose batch plants: A real chemical-pharmaceutical case study

Regular and non-regular production can often be found in multipurpose batch plants, requiring two distinct operating strategies: campaign and short-term production. This paper proposes a solution approach for simultaneous scheduling of campaign and short-term products in multipurpose batch plants. Regular products follow a cyclic schedule and must cover several product deliveries during the scheduling horizon, while non-regular products have a non-cyclic schedule. The proposed approach explores the Resource-Task Network (RTN) discrete-time formulation. Moreover, a rolling horizon approach, and reformulation and branching strategies have been applied to deal with the computational complexity of the scheduling problem. Real case instances of a chemical-pharmaceutical industry are solved, showing the applicability of the solution approach. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.