Scheduling with resource management in manufacturing systems

Modern manufacturing technology has made it possible to concentrate the total production process on very few NC-machines. In the metal cutting industry, mechanical parts are often produced on a single machine, as a sequence of machining operations requiring different tools. In this way, time consuming set-ups and transfer are avoided. However, the required resources, like tools, fixtures and pallets, have greatly increased in varieties and numbers. This increase imposes difficult control and management problems. A new problem area seems to emerge with this development; namely the need for techniques to solve simultaneously two linked scheduling problems: the part-machine scheduling problem and the resource allocation and sequencing problem. It is the objective of this paper to expose the problems arising in connection wtih these two-level nested scheduling problems and describe some concrete models and solution procedures.