A bottom-up self-organizing scheduling approach is presented to optimize a kind of scheduling problems with
batching optimization in multistage batch processes. Firstly, a self-organizing scheduling model framework is built up by constructing kinds of self-organizing units associated with real-world orders, batches and equipment units in the batch processes. The optimal properties of multistage batch scheduling problems are analyzed. Then, batching optimization rules and self-organizing selection strategies are introduced in detail. Based on the strategies, a self-organizing optimal scheduling algorithm is proposed for the given model. Finally, several examples are given and the computational results show that the presented approach can obtain optimal solutions or near-optimal solutions in a short time, which verifies the effectiveness and the superiority of the proposed approach.