A framework for dynamic dispatch decision-making applied in transportation scheduling

Scheduling is the process of resource allocation to task demands; a schedule includes resource allocation times to specific tasks and sequences in which tasks are processed by resources to obtain certain performance objectives. Heuristic and computational means are employed to develop schedules. When a planned schedule gets disrupted, the same schedule and dispatch sequence may not still provide the intended objective. In this paper, we present a novel method for deciding dispatch sequence of disrupted tasks pertaining to job shop scheduling problems. Our approach is based on simple computations on dynamic system parameters at the disrupt instance. We describe our dispatch decision-making process and validate performance of our procedure in achieving the intended objective. We verify applicability of our method to real-life problems as in railway rescheduling. Performance evaluations with other comparable procedures, managerial insights and problem characteristics where our framework is employable are reported.