This paper suggests a decision tree based approach for flexible job shop scheduling with multiple process plans. The problem is to determine the operation/machine pairs and the sequence of the jobs assigned to each machine. Two decision tree based scheduling mechanisms are developed for static and dynamic flexible job shops. In the static case, all jobs are given in advance and the decision tree is used to select a priority dispatching rule to process all the jobs. Also, in the dynamic case, the jobs arrive over time and the decision tree, updated regularly, is used to select a priority rule in real-time according to a rescheduling strategy. The two decision tree based mechanisms were applied to a flexible job shop case with reconfigurable manufacturing cells and a conventional job shop, and the results are reported for various system performance measures.
