This section describes an application of SWO to a fiber-optic production line scheduling problem, derived from data provided by Lucent Technologies. In this particular plant, a cable may be assembled on any one of 13 parallel production lines. For each cable type, only a subset of the production lines are compatible, and the time required to produce the cable will depend on which of the compatible lines is selected. Each cable also has a setup time, which depends on its own cable type and that of its predecessor. Setups between certain pairs of cable types are infeasible. Task preemption is not allowed, i.e. once a cable has started processing on a line, it finishes without interruption.
Each cable is assigned a release time and due date. Production cannot begin before the release time. The objective function includes a penalty for missing due dates, and a penalty for setup times.