A fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making technique for evaluation of scheduling rules

When examining manufacturing systems using simulation models, different combinations of scheduling rules can be applied to the models. Each combination satisfies a very limited number of performance measures. The problem now is "how to evaluate these combinations" and "how to reflect the weighting of each performance measure in the system". Evaluation of scheduling rules is an inevitable task for any scheduler. Only a few evaluation procedures of the results obtained from computer simulation were found in the literature. In this paper, a framework for the evaluation of combinations of scheduling rules has been developed using fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making techniques, which are called MAW, Max-Min, and Max-Max. A simulation model is used to illustrate the proposed techniques. The results are compared with a simple approach for multi-criteria decision-making method, which is called SAW. Results show that MAW is the best technique for obtaining a high score in the analysis.