A heuristic simulation-based framework to improve the scheduling of blocks assembly and the production process in shipbuilding

Strong global competition in the shipbuilding market has forced shipyards to focus their efforts on optimizing their system resources. Therefore, the development of efficient medium-term and short-term operation strategies in the shipyard block assembly process is becoming a potential competitiveness tool. This paper introduces a heuristic simulation-based approach to address the scheduling problem for shipbuilding in a real-world multi-stage production system. The main goal is to minimize the total production and assembly time of the shipbuilding process (makespan) applying different types of heuristic rules in an advanced simulation framework. The proposed simulation model allows evaluation of the effective production of a large number of blocks and sub-blocks, while satisfying a large set of hard constraints. Uncertain alternative scenarios are tested and computational statistics are carefully analyzed.