Please see the "New Schedule" sheet in the attached excel file for the problem. It's currently been optimized using solver.
Basically, the left column represents the "Fillers", and the right side has six "Mixers" (CM06, CM07...). The mixers send product to the fillers to create final goods, so I created the table so that filling out the final goods fill times will reverse fill the mixer times (if I want to fill out the final good at X time, when do I need to make the bulk?). I then use solver to optimize by having zero overlap of mixer times and fill times respectively. I created a column for the fill times showing the difference from the beginning of the week to the start times, and had solver minimize this since that would create a schedule with everything happening as close to the beginning of the week as possible. My new issue is that there are wash cycles that need to happen for the mixers, but if I fill them out in the fillers, (look under Profil-Clip at D14 and D15, there are two wash cycles) solver rearranges them same as the fill times.
I need a way to make sure the wash cycles happen between a certain number of mixer batches, or that it happens at a certain time. I've considered having solver not affect it, but that doesn't stop it from rearranging the other times around the wash cycle, which could end up leaving the wash cycle in the wrong spot. Also, if I fill out the wash cycle after running solver, I need a way to go back and fix the fill times as well.
Thank you
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