A Modified HLFET Algorithm for Parallelization of Manufacturing Tasks with Causal Dependencies

Some typical scheduling problem in manufacturing processes can be described as follows: An infinite number of manufacturing tasks which are using one or more devices with different features, should be scheduled with a maximum degree of parallelism. Thereby the tasks have causal dependencies. In this paper we present a modified and extended HLFET algorithm which will be able to automatically detect parallelism earlier and which is able to increase manufacturing performance by reducing the makespan further. We demonstrate our algorithm in the context of a manufacturing device, with a workstation having different resources and device features. This device is designed to monitor the contamination-free, precise and correct measurement and transfer of liquids and to automatically control the combining of liquids.