Textile manufacturing is vital for providing clothing, home furnishings, and industrial materials. It employs millions globally, contributing significantly to economies. Additionally, it drives innovation in materials science and sustainable production practices.
In the weaving scheduling problem, a set of fabric orders arrive over time and should be first set up by specialized workers and then processed by a set of available looms, operating under varying speeds, with respect to various priority (sequence-dependent setups, due dates) and resource constraints (loom eligibilities, limited working groups for looms setup).
OptEngine:
Impact & Offerings
OptEngine is activated either in a periodic manner, e.g., weekly, when a set of new weaving orders arrive, or when an unexpected situation occurs, e.g., delayed order, loom malfunction, yarn breakage. Its goal is to propose a schedule of the orders to looms, optimizing over multiple criteria, such as energy consumption and makespan minimization. OptEngine also provides the opportunity to users to evaluate different structural decisions (via appropriate front-end development tools), allowing for configurations of critical input parameters, such as the splitting of each fabric order’s quantity into smaller pieces, the number of working groups available for loom setup, or the daily setup time limit.
The results of optEngine have been tested on real data provided by an Italian manufacturer of woolen fabrics, leader in the segment of noble fiber fabrics for fashion and luxury markets, proving significant improvements over 20-30% on average when compared with the current status on various scheduling criteria, including the number of delayed orders, weaving completion time, and total energy consumption.
