Spatial and temporal decomposition method in production management

Some decomposition methods to split scheduling problems into smaller scheduling subproblems are discussed. Spatial decomposition methods consist of dividing the production system into subsystems that are as independent as possible. It is shown how to manage the remaining links between these subsystems. Temporal decomposition handles the problem with a decomposition along the time axes: part sets are scheduled successively, and these sets are built according to the release due dates of the parts. A spatial and temporal decomposition method is presented that first uses the spatial decomposition approach to obtain subproblems, and next computes the solution of the subproblems by the temporal decomposition approach. Numerical examples are given.<>