SMT production scheduling: A generalized transportation approach

A generalized transportation model is first formulated for the scheduling of Surface Mount Technology (SMT) production. Its dual form is next discussed. By specially coding the SMT scheduling problem, it is unnecessary to develop the constraint matrix for the dual. The simplex method is not applicable for this problem due to its sparse data structure. An efficient algorithm for the dual model is then developed from the idea of the revised simplex method. To illustrate the algorithm, a numeric example is presented.