Patent ID: 8117052

Claim:
A scheduling model system for planning assignment of discrete jobs to multiple departments for shipment, wherein selected jobs are assignable to respective selected departments, and the departments share finite capacity resources, the model comprising: a programmable computer system having loaded therein an objective function, and the computer system minimizes a value of the objective function; and wherein the objective function comprises a sum of cost to ship containers in at least one of consolidated and unconsolidated forms, cost for each of a container equivalent that is not completed in a selected scheduling horizon, cost to process each job in each department, and cost for setup due to at least one of shift crossing and job splitting, wherein the cost for each of a container equivalent that is not completed in a selected scheduling horizon is represented in the objective function by the expression ∑ k = 1 n ⁢ P 2 ⁢ C k B k ⁢ ( B k - ∑ j ∈ R ⁢ ∑ i = 1 r ⁢ Y ikj ) wherein P 2 is a cost of shipping by an alternative mode of transportation, i is a shift index number from 1 to r, j is a department index number from 1 to m, k is a job index number from 1 to n, C k is a number of containers to be generated by job k, B k is a number of pieces to be shipped in job k, Y ikj is a number of pieces of job k shipped during shift i in department j, and R is a set of picking and processing departments other than merging or sorting departments.