Interdependant task scheduling / Products through a pipe

From: AngleWyrm (no_spam_anglewyrm_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 09/25/04 

Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 20:46:57 GMT

In a manufacturing pipeline, there is a point at which several products pass
through a given station. These products each have a different viscosity, and
the time spent at this station can be calculated as a function of the
average viscosity of all products present. I want to schedule the products,
and optimize the time spent given other factors (such as equipent/personell
issues, sales delivery targets, pipeline limits, etc).

The scheduling softwares that I have found so far all require hard-coded
times for each product at a station, which is inaccurate: The time at
station is a cost function of products passing through that station.

Does anyone have experience with this kind of problem? Perhaps different
sizes, weights, or pressures of items passing through a pipe?

I am willing to write the necessary code (C++, VBA/Excel, whatever), but am
in need of some algorithms.