Dispatching problems for parallel machines in the TFT-LCD assembly process

Thin-film transistor liquid-crystal displays (TFT-LCDs) have gradually replaced cathode-ray tubes because of their compact size and efficient use of power. Since product lifecycles are shortening, consumers require instant order delivery, which affects fluctuations in supply and demand. As various product types in the LCD industry exist, manufacturing time has to be reduced to satisfy consumer demand. This study investigates the dispatching of parallel machines for TFT-LCD manufacturing. Since customers’ orders and suppliers’ deliveries vary significantly and the manual adjustment of production planning is time consuming, an appropriate production planning and scheduling system is necessary. Consequently, this study develops a genetic algorithm to solve the scheduling problem of unrelated parallel machines, taking account of multiple performance measurement indicators. We also adopt LINGO to solve the problem and compare the obtained solution quality and computation time of the two approaches to justify the effectiveness of the proposed genetic algorithm.