Abstract
This paper deals with the design of priority rules for job shops that process multi-level assembly jobs. Specifically, it explores the means by which the structural complexity of jobs can be incorporated explicitly into priority rules to reduce job lead times. The job lead time is viewed as consisting of two components: flow time and job staging delays. The primary focus of the paper is on the development of a class of priority rules that is aimed at reducing the staging delay. The class of priority rules that is developed is then used in combination with rules that are effective for the flow time component. The combined rule results in the improvement of the lead time performance. The paper also includes experimental results on sets of jobs of varying degrees of complexity. These results provide a comparative perspective on the performance of priority rules that have been examined in the earlier research literature as well as the rules specifically developed in this paper.