Rolling horizon scheduling of multi-factory supply chains

The virtual factory is a job shop scheduling tool that was developed at NC State. It has been found to provide near-optimal solutions to industrial-sized problems in seconds. Recently, the virtual factory was expanded to include interfactory transportation operations, which enabled the detailed scheduling of entire multifactory manufacturing supply chains. Separately, a rolling horizon procedure was developed to test the virtual factory for single factory problems. This procedure allowed us to more accurately predict how the virtual factory would perform in industry. Consequently, the rolling horizon procedure was extended to multifactory settings to gauge industrial performance and eliminate transient effects found in previous multifactory experimentation. Experimental results, under a variety of different scenarios, indicate that the virtual factory also performs well in multifactory, rolling horizon settings.