# Multi-Criteria Optimization in Operations Scheduling Applying Selected Priority Rules  
[PERSON]  
1 Institute of Applied Informatics, Automation and Mechatronics, Faculty of Material Science and Technology in Tmaxa, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, 91724 Tmaxa, Slovakia; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (Z.C. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (P.V. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (B.J. )1  
[PERSON]  
1 Institute of Applied Informatics, Automation and Mechatronics, Faculty of Material Science and Technology in Tmaxa, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, 91724 Tmaxa, Slovakia; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (Z.C. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (P.V. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (B.J. )1  
[PERSON]  
1 Institute of Applied Informatics, Automation and Mechatronics, Faculty of Material Science and Technology in Tmaxa, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, 91724 Tmaxa, Slovakia; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (Z.C. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (P.V. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (B.J. )1  
[PERSON]  
1 Institute of Applied Informatics, Automation and Mechatronics, Faculty of Material Science and Technology in Tmaxa, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, 91724 Tmaxa, Slovakia; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (Z.C. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (P.V. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (B.J. )1  
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In contrast to other methods, dispatching rules (we also use the term priority rules throughout the following text) represent the valuable practical and dominant approach of the shop floor control in the complex industry environment [10; 11], such as, e.g., in semiconductor manufacturing for solving complex scheduling problems in real-time [12]. Priority rules are popular because they are characterized by the simplicity of implementation, satisfactory performance, and a substantially reduced computational requirement [2; 11; 13]. Nevertheless, the choice of appropriate dispatching rules is not a trivial task and depends on the relevant key performance indicators [11]. When considering the application of specific priority rule in production control, a question appears on how the selection of priority rule influences the production performance objectives. Years of research on the field of priority rules have shown that in general, no rule outperforms the others, whereas there are different system configurations, operating conditions, and production performance indicators [14; 15]. This is understandable, considering that the rules are developed for a specific category of system configurations involving a specific set of performance objectives, therefore they generally do not work well in an environment where they were not intended [15]. The impacts generated by the selected priority rule are mostly difficult to explain by analytical methods [1], thus the simulation is used very often to evaluate the schedule efficiency in the complex scheduling problem [10; 16]. As an illustration, in the simulation study, [PERSON] and [PERSON] [13] evaluated the performance measures based on flow time and tardiness of jobs for the different combinations of due-date assignment methods and seven scheduling decision rules applied in a dynamic job shop system. [PERSON] et al. [5] compared seventeen dispatching rules in the study focused on stochastic dynamic scheduling problems with sequence-dependent setups. Performance measures were mean work-in-progress (WIP), mean cycle time, mean tardiness, and a fraction of tardy jobs. In opposition to the simulation, the optimization approach offers to find the optimal or near-optimal scheduling concerning one or more desired objectives.