Jobs and tool sequencing in an automated manufacturing environment

A practical approach is presented for determining the sequence of jobs and tools in the magazine that would be required to process the jobs in an automated manufacturing environment. Each job has to be completed before a given due date. The magazine has a limited capacity necessitating setups which increase the lead times. Processing jobs also requires an appropriate fixture. Setting up a fixture also contributes to the setup times. A heuristic procedure is developed which determines the above sequences while minimizing the total setup and processing times. The performance of the heuristic is checked against optimal solutions for small-size problems while bounds are obtained (based on statistical lower bounding procedures) on the optimal solution for large-size problems. Computational results are provided for 155 test problems.