Article ID: | iaor19961564 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 8 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 45 |
End Page Number: | 65 |
Publication Date: | Jan 1996 |
Journal: | International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems |
Authors: | Ng W.C. |
Keywords: | scheduling, programming: branch and bound |
The article studies the scheduling problem of a material handling hoist in a circuit board production line. The existing models for the problem assume that the times required to perfrom inter-tank moves are given constants. However, as shown in a simple example, the optimal solutions obtained under this assumption may not be the actual optimal solutions. In this article the times for inter-tank moves are decision variables of a mixed integer program proposed for the problem. An efficient branch and bound algorithm is developed for solving the problem optimally. A numerical example is used to illustrate the algorithm. Computational experience with benchmark problems and randomly generated test problems is discussed.