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In job‐shop scheduling research, the shortest processing time despatching rule (SPT) has received considerable attention. Several truncated shortest processing time (SPT) despatching rules have been published in the literature. The motivation for such rules is that SPT despatching will frequently result in favourable inventory levels but unfavourable due date performance. Thus, the truncated SPT rules periodically switch from SPT despatching to despatching by some other rule. Owing to the complexity associated with these truncated rules, their implementation is doubtful. As a result, a modified truncated rule is presented that is easy to implement and yet performs favourably with respect to inventory and due date performance.

In this paper, the authors investigate the effects bottleneck machines have on the performance of a multi‐stage job shop. The operation performed by the bottleneck and its position in the product Bill of Materials is varied to determine the effects on system performance. It was found that the best place for the bottleneck machine to be located was at gateway operations located low in the Bill of Materials.